Why the Decline in Job Vacancies?

 Financial FAQs

“The number of job openings was little changed at 6.9 million in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, hires decreased to 4.8 million, and total separations changed little at 5.0 million.” BLS.gov

FREDjobopenings

The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) was bad news for workers, as per the slide in available jobs portrayed in the above graph of monthly job openings.

It has now fallen to just 6.9 million in February 2026, the total of available nonfarm payroll jobs tallied by the Labor Department. Actual job hires fell to 4.8 million while 5.0 million left the workforce, a net loss of 200,000 jobs.

The Iran War will add to the damage that has already been done to the U.S.—and maybe worldwide—economy from the single-minded focus on what is most important to President Trump and his Robber Barons; bringing back another Gilded Age with its ultra-consolidation of wealth that has caused record public debt that is being paid for by American taxpayers. 

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich listed the economic damage from Trump’s first term alone. He (Trump) pledged to be “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.”

He’s been the worst jobs president in American history. In his first term, Trump presided over a historic net loss of nearly 3 million jobs, the worst jobs numbers ever recorded under an American president, as tabulated by FactCheck.org.

FactCheck.org showed more the decline in Trump’s first term:

· The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 36.3% from 2016.

· The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.

· The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.

And President Trump month-long war with Iran is adding to the damage with the blocked petroleum supply chain that provides so many necessary byproducts—such as fertilizer, natural gas and helium, for starters.

“After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers at least $30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans. It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips,” said Professor Reich

So we shouldn’t be looking at the 1970’s era of stagflation for a result from the Iran War because of the damage already done in President Trump’s second term, whether the Strait is closed, or not. It may take longer to materialize but look more like another Great Recession, I said recently, that was caused by the economic mismanagement of another Republican administration involved in a Middle East war.

A key will be watching the employment picture this week, especially the Labor Department’s Friday unemployment report.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Won the Shutdown?

 Financial FAQs

“What if conservatives succeeded in repealing Obamacare? “Republicans' Obamacare repeal bill would leave 17 million more people uninsured next year, and 32 million more in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said in an estimate Wednesday. It also said premiums would double by 2026. …By 2026, three quarters of the population would live in areas with no insurers participating in the non-group market, due to upward pressure on premiums and downward pressure on enrollment, the report found.” Huffington Post

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Republicans didn’t win the recent government shutdown because they don’t understand how important affordable healthcare has become to all Americans, not just the wealthy.

They were in fact attempting to take down Obamacare (ACA) once again by not including the subsidies in the continuing resolution that made it available for middle and low-income folk.

Republicans have proven time and again that they want non-senior Americans to pay for health care out of their own pockets, if not through their employer or business. Their extreme dislike of the federal government providing any public healthcare is most evident in Trump picking a very demented RFK, Jr. to lead the Department of Health & Human Services, while slashing Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

It reveals why they are the party of wealthy oligarchs. They are not at all interested in the health of their constituents. It’s why Republican administrations have attempted to repeal Obamacare more than 30 times and why many of the Republican red states haven’t enlisted in the Obamacare premium subsidies that would enable their own citizens to afford Obamacare

So I cited above a CBO estimate from my 2017 Huffington Post article of the benefits to Americans’ health from Obamacare resulting from its passage.

A 2016 Commonwealth Club study said “…evidence indicates that the ACA has likely acted as an economic stimulus, in part by freeing up private and public resources for investment in jobs and production capacity. Moreover, the law’s payment and other cost-related reforms appear to have contributed to the marked slowdown in health spending growth seen in recent years.”

Some of those benefits are:

· Health care spending growth per person—both public and private—has slowed for five years.

· A number of ACA reforms, particularly related to Medicare, have likely contributed to the slowdown in health care spending growth by tightening provider payment rates and introducing incentives to reduce excess costs.

· Faster-than-expected economic growth and slower-than-expected health care spending have led to multiple downward revisions of the federal deficit and projected deficits.

· These trends have also been a boon to state and local government budgets, as job growth has improved state tax revenues while cost growth in health care programs has slowed. At the same time, expanding insurance to millions of people who were previously uninsured has supported local health systems and enhanced families’ ability to pay for necessities, including health care.

We now must wait for the November 20 release of the delayed September unemployment report to learn just how much the shutdown hurt the American economy.

But the almost complete ignorance of Obamacare’s importance by Republicans during the shutdown enabled Democrats’ big win in the November elections.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Trump's Art of the Steal

 Popular Economics Weekly

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.” Author Tony Schwartz

Huffington Post

Tony Schwartz should have named his 1987 Trump biography “The Art of the Steal.” Trump’s main talent has been his ability to steal from others.

Trump’s Republican-engineered shutdown that allowed no Democratic input is his latest theft. Refusing to negotiate the continuing resolution (CR) with Democrats caused the shutdown, which will give Trump an excuse for even more job losses, cost-cutting and closing of government services, as well as essential services for social security, Medicare and Medicaid, while downsizing Obamacare benefits by as much as 70 percent.

It’s becoming obvious that Trump and his Republican accomplices are stealing as much as they can from the American people in his second term.

Americans are paying in a big way. Higher everyday prices to begin with for groceries, energy, and even higher interest rates. The Federal Reserve has been reluctant to lower interest rates until now because of the rising inflation levels due to the rising costs from Trump’s tariffs.

His thievery has been well documented, lately in Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner’s best seller, Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, that documents the con artist he really is.

“Donald Trump came to be imbued with a host of attributes that speak to how we confer status and admiration in modern America. Our awe of celebrity. Our tendency to conflate the trappings of wealth with expertise and ability. Our eagerness to believe people of apparent status will not lie to us. Our inability to distinguish the fruits of hard work from those of sheer luck.”.

It's a sordid tale, because he has stolen from friends and foes alike. So why have Republicans allowed the wholesale stealing, who were once the party of President Nixon that signed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into law?

It is only possible because of the intentional dumbing down of a political party that came to rely on conspiracy theories instead of facts, according to conservative journalist Matt Lewis in his 2016 best-seller, Too Dumb to Fail:

“Somewhere between Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the most recent government shutdown, the conservative movement became neither conservative nor a movement. Hijacked by the divisive and the dumb, it now finds itself hostage to emotions and irrational thinking.”

Why? Because it became the party of the super wealthy that could only maintain power by hiring the “divisive and dumb”, as Trump has done, to run the Republican Party and his government.

Trump’s recommendation of bleach injections and the downplay of mask use to treat the COVID-19 pandemic were an attempt to dumb down his electorate, and many MAGA supporters died because of it.

Author Tony Schwartz attributed Trump’s inability to focus on any subject for more than a few minutes to his short attention span. But the chaos that followed disguised his real intentions; to steal from whomever he is dealing with, such as the students of his faux Trump University, the workers he never paid that built his Atlantic City casinos, multiple bankruptcies, and his own charitable foundation that he milked for his own use.

Why would one political party become so devoid of basic truths that they follow a man who says climate change is a hoax while experiencing more frequent floods, fires, tornadoes and rising sea levels with their own eyes?

How many more jobs will be lost, more natural disasters and pandemics and even recessions will occur, before the Republican Party base realizes they’ve been conned and want to become part of a democratic system again in which all are treated equally under the law and our constitution?

It’s what wannabe dictators do to stay in power, if their electorate will allow it.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Trade Wars = Stagflation

 

Popular Economics Weekly

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in July, after rising 0.3 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.7 percent before seasonal adjustment.” BLS.gov

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The damage is already being done from Donald Trump’s tariffs that are for the most part illegal—higher inflation. And American consumers and businesses will soon realize what it does to their pocketbooks as they begin to pay for his big, beautiful tax cuts for the wealthiest.

Inflation has been rising since April when President Trump announced his trade war on the rest of the world. The core retail Consumer Price Index without gas and food prices that the Federal Reserve prefers increased to 3.1% annualized, way above the Fed’s target rate to keep inflation from getting out of control.

Though the CPI energy index decreased 1.6% for the 12 months ending July, the food index increased 2.9% over the last year, which worries consumers more. And food prices will continue to increase as Trump chases almost half of the agricultural workers from American fields they harvest in his roundup of undocumented immigrants.

We can learn from past episodes the effects of inflation when out of control, such as the 1970’s stagflation from the OPEC embargo induced oil shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic caused more recent product shortages and supply chains shutdowns as well that pushed CPI inflation to 9% in 2022 and was the Democrats undoing.

The COVID-induced inflation backed down to 3% in a year (June 2023), but voters believed Trump when he said he would bring down inflation on “Day 1”.

Trump’s trade wars are affecting economic growth, the other part of the stagflation equation, because exporters are disrupting supply chains in their attempts to avoid the higher tariffs. And because Trump has declared tariffs on everyone, it’s more difficult for exporters to find a work around.

We have barely begun to see the effect of the tariff hikes because Trump keeps postponing many of them, giving China another 90 days to come to terms, for instance, though China’s tariff rate is already 30 percent.

Slowing growth will begin to show up soon enough in his tariff scheme. Q2 GDP grew 3% after its negative -0.5% shrinkage in Q1 because imports dried up after April 2 when Trump announced his trade war.

But GDP growth will shrink again as importers begin to pay a higher tax when more tariff agreenebts kick in. There is one problem, however. Trump may have to refund the $130 billion his administration has already collected to those very same importers, if his appeal to the Foreign Trade Court is denied. And the appeals court may decide so, since he had declared the trade deficit a national emergency, which means the Trump administration must return those funds.

As Paul Krugman said recently on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show, The Last Word, it will then be Trump’s problem to unscramble the accounting mess that it will cause in returning the money to those importers that were levied.

Americans will soon see the results in growth when their prices begin to rise in earnest. Trump is literally using the tariff taxes paid by American businesses and ultimately consumers in higher prices to pay for the tax cuts given to his wealthiest supporters, as I said. And that will begin to stall economic growth very soon as Americans have less to invest and spend.

It will be the price we must pay, unfortunately, until enough voters realize President Trump and his Republicans have foisted a giant Ponzi scheme on the American people.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

What Happened to the Minimum Wage?

 Popular Economics Weekly

As of January 2025, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee have not adopted a state minimum wage. This means that workers in these states earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

PBS.org

Currently, just 34 states, territories and districts have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, according to the National Association of State Legislatures.

“Five states have not adopted a state minimum wage: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Three states, Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming, have a minimum wage below $7.25 per hour. In all eight of these states, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour generally applies.” NASL

How is that possible in today’s inflationary economy when the price of everything is too high? Republicans call it States Rights, the mantra that conservative Republicans use to justify the high poverty rate prevailing in these red states, which is the reason a Donald Trump could become the president.

The federal government is so evil (too many gays, immigrants, taxes), say the red staters, that they must oppose as many of its policies as possible (other than social security, Medicare and Medicaid, of course).

It’s also a total con but Republicans have succeeded in convincing the majority of their electorate in those states to listen to them rather than the blue states whose excess (higher) tax monies pay their benefits and help to balance the budgets of the red states.

Kentucky is a prime example, where prosperous blue states such as California and New York have large surplus taxes that flow to poor red states like Kentucky—more than $60 billion annually in their case for pensions and healthcare owed its citizens—to support its citizens and its own budget deficit (due to a low tax rate).

The above PBS map highlights where the poorest (gray colored) states are located, mainly the south and Midwest where right-to-work laws that obstruct union organizing still prevail. These are laws that say one can work for a company that has unionized its workers in these states, but the Supreme Court has ruled they don’t have to pay the union dues that support the benefits being unionized (higher wages and benefits, generally) such membership gives them.

It's difficult to believe such ignorance still prevails with the modern mass media, but culture wars still exist in America with its many ethnic and racial divisions. Such a variety of immigrants has been the reason the United States of America has been the most prosperous country in the world, but also the most divided in these red states.

It’s the overweening bigotry, a relic of the civil war, that has kept red states poor; and a propaganda network of Fox News and conservative talk shows that has kept the likes of autocrats and dictators in power.

High inflation since COVID-19 is a good example of fear and paranoia topping common sense. Most people understand that inflation is caused by a shortage of things; in this case because of the COVID-19 pandemic that caused a brief recession and shut down the world economy.

But fear does funny things to people, and only such a well-oiled, conservative propaganda network could convince red staters that it was because Democrats had given them too much money to spend. Yet it is Biden’s New, New Deal legislation that is modernizing the American economy and keeping them at full employment!

But when has common sense prevailed in politics? We need to bring back the middle class that prevailed after World War Two, but was decimated by so many recessions since then, as politics gradually moved to the right and budget deficits grew.

Common sense could prevail if congress can avoid renewing Trump’s first term tax cut in the budget negotiations, which will increase the federal debt by another $4 trillion, while cutting Medicaid benefits in the red states that need them the most.

But since when has common sense prevailed?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen