Economy is growing but more jobs are needed

Inertia is a very important process. Inertia, like love, makes the world go round, and keeps it going. Moving bodies tend to keep moving. the eeconomies that are growing They tend to keep growing. So if you look at the January jobs report, it reminds us that the economy has momentum on its side. It has a reasonable head of steam. Growth is not the wow factor.

The economy is growing about 2 percent a year, which is pretty pedestrian by historical standards. Instead, it is about the potential of the economy. The reason potential growth is low today has to do with why the recent jobs reports have been raising a few eyebrows.

When a economy is growing, economists are always looking for the irresistible object, for whatever will stop the advance of the economy, and make an economy that is just at rest tend to stay at rest. This is not because economists love misery. It's only because the appearance of a hurdle to a growing economy gives us our next job to try to perpetuate growth or, if that hurdle does indeed cripple the economy, to restore growth.

The economy has been creating a lot of jobs month after month, which is surprising because the working-age population has been growing very slowly. Americans are graying, Baby Boomers are retiring, and there are proportionately fewer teens and millennials to fill their places in the workforce. As the number of jobs grows at an impressive rate month after month, economists are scratching their heads and wondering, where did all these people come from? In the quest for a lockout that could stop the bandwagon of jobs, and potentially economic expansion, when will those critics stop showing up in the monthly jobs report?

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But in the bigger picture, the picture is good. People continue to find work. People with jobs tend to be happy and spend their salaries, which in turn creates more jobs for the next month. Once again, moving bodies tend to keep moving. So economists looking at this jobs report don't see specific brush fires to fight, but continue to worry about dry conditions ahead. The working-age population continues to grow slowly, while the headroom for growth in our workforce continues to shrink.

Preparing not for the next monthly jobs report, but for the years and decades to come, which is what we should really be concerned about, requires that we try to accelerate the paltry growth of the labor force so that we can ramp up production more quickly and provide all Baby Boomers retiring the living standards they expect, with enough left over for our working-age population, and their children in turn, to have the kind of living standards and education funding they need.

To that end, we need to encourage more adult Americans to join or stay in the workforce, to upskill so they can be more productive and earn higher wages, and to attract the most talented from around the world. Every forward-thinking company in every country is looking for the best people from anywhere in the world to fill cutting-edge jobs so that those companies can take advantage of economic leadership. If the United States wants to maintain the lead, we need to compete aggressively. If we don't, trouble-sniffing economists will surely one day see trouble in the month-after-month employment reports. Economies at rest tend to remain at rest.