Trump's Economy - Created 2 million jobs in 2017

Numbers were recently released detailing how good the stock market and job market currently are under President Trump. In 2017, about 2 million jobs were created especially under manufacturing - an industry Trump promised to repopulate in his election. However, while these numbers are impressive, when looking at the percentages of change in the stock market compared to presidents Trump's numbers still don't compare to Obama's. The stock market went up 27% in Trump's first year in office as compared to Obama's 33%.

Chart courtesy of CNN

There's also talk by experts that attribute the growth of the market in one year to the President that held office the year before. Additionally, although 2 million jobs is substantial, it doesn't compare to previous years. In 2016, 2.2 million jobs were created, in 2015 there were 2.7 million, and in 2014 there were 3 million. Of course this is only natural as coming out of the Great Recession more jobs were created at a faster rate and then as unemployment goes down so does the job market.

The job market is so strong actually that employers are complaining they can't find qualified workers for their industries. Because of this, some experts claim that part of the reason wage growth isn't growing at as fast a rate as it should is because of the fact that employers aren't finding people qualified enough to fit their jobs and therefore wage growth is being stumped at whatever level they are qualified at. The interesting point here is that Trump is planning to cut the federal education budget (leaving the education funding to the states) and also cut the amount of student loans given out in the name of jobs. But as time goes on we are seeing that almost every industry is requiring a higher level of education / qualification for its workers, so in the end is limiting students' access to college really going to help the job market? And while Trump has done a good job bolstering areas like manufacturing, some of his reforms have hurt small businesses and retailers who are losing their stores and jobs because of the shift.

When you look at the numbers, they are indeed impressive, and unemployment is at a 17-year low (4.1%), but they might not be as impressive as his tweets indicate considering the other factors like percentage of growth and how good the economy already was when he took office.

Questions:
1. Do you think Trump is actually doing as well as he claims regarding the economy? Why or why not?
2. What do you predict to happen in the following years of his presidency?

Sources:
CNN

CNN pt. 2
CNN pt. 3