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But unemployment statistics suggest instead that there isn’t much slack in the workforce,” Hiltzik smugly wrote. “At 4.4%, the unemployment rate is at about the point economists judge to be full employment.”83 Hiltzik was just as confident Trump would have no success turning productivity around. Thankfully, the naysayers lost. Under Trump, wages rose for the first time in two decades.84 In November 2018, unemployment dropped to its lowest rate in a half century. Black unemployment reached its lowest recorded level in May 2018, at 5.9 percent, and unemployment rates for Latino, young, and low-skilled workers are lower than they’ve been in years. Unemployment for Americans with disabilities also reached an all-time low.85 In the same year women’s unemployment reached its lowest rate in sixty-five years. By the close of 2018 there were more job openings in America than unemployed people for the first time in this nation’s history. More than five million jobs had been created since Trump took office.
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