Economy adds 228,000 jobs in November, which is pretty good but well short of we can do

Don't get me wrong. I'll take it. With unemployment at historically low rates (The U-6 is at 7.9 percent; the U-3 is at 4.1 percent) and you're adding jobs, the challenge is going to be finding people to fill them. The report notes that wages aren't rising as fast as the number of jobs itself, but that will change as more qualified workers emerge to pursue the jobs and employers find the higher wages worth paying. We're basically at full employment right now with one big honkin' caveat: If those who have exited the workforce ever decide to re-enter it in massive numbers (and they're starting to but only in a trickle), we'll need a lot more job growth than this:

Employers added 228,000 jobs last month in a sign the labor market remains healthy despite worker shortages and two months of hurricane-related volatility, but wage growth remained tepid.

The unemployment rate, which is calculated from a different survey, was unchanged at 4.1%, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast 195,000 employment gains in November. Businesses added 221,000 jobs, lifted by hiring in professional and business services, health care and manufacturing. Federal, state and local governments added 7,000. Job gains for September and October were revised up by a total 3,000. September’s was upgraded to 38,000 from 18,000 and October’s was revised down to 244,000 from 261,000.

I think some of the job growth, even in November, reflects pent-up demand from the storm-depleted numbers we saw in September. If you take the average of the last three months, you'd be under 200,000, which some see as the replacement level considering the ongoing growth in population (although others argue it's as low as 140,000). All told, the healthy job growth of much of 2017 tracks with the healthier GDP growth, and all of it taken together probably represents a gigantic sigh of relief by the business community that they no longer have the Obama Administration looking for ways to litigate, investigate, regulate or tax them into submission. I'm convinced it pales in comparison to what we can expect if tax reform actually passes, and lowers the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from the current rate of 35 percent.

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About that: You've probably seem some left-wing commentators argue that the lower tax rate won't create any new jobs because - according to some survey that was supposedly taken - they'll just use the money for executive bonuses or whatever. I don't know who takes these surveys or how they're conducted, but that's not how businesses allocate their capital. They don't sit there in the board room and say, "Oh look, the tax cut gave us a windful. Shall we cut checks to ourselves?" The corporation's job is to enhance shareholder value, and that means allocating capital to the priority that will meet the company's most important needs. They won't hire people just for the sake of hiring them. It would be foolish to do that. But if they need more productivity, they'll probably invest in a combination of new hires and automation. If they're concerned about retaining their people, they'll probably consider raising compensation. Or maybe they want to meet profit goals this year so they can consider growth and expansion next year. The point is that the company can allocate less of its revenue to paying taxes and more to things that actually bring growth and prosperity. They don't have to turn right around and immediately invest the capital in new job creation for the policy to drive growth and opportunity overall. Eventually, growing companies hire more people, and when that happens you'll see job growth numbers a lot better than 228,000 on a consistent basis. But for now we'll take it, even as we strive for more.