The politicians might not wanna admit it, but it's doing better than expected. We're adding jobs like nobody's business, and even though inflation's high, it's coming down. How we doing it, you ask?
Well, there's lots of reasons, but one big factor is something called net immigration. That's when people come here from other countries, and in 2022, we had over a million! That's the most since 2017. We don't know if it'll keep up, but it's been helpful. You might even say that immigrants are saving our economy.
Now, despite the interest rates going up, we still got a strong job market. Last month, we added 236,000 jobs! That's even more than what they predicted before the pandemic hit. And even though some folks worry that good employment numbers mean worse inflation, it don't seem to be happening. The experts are arguing about it, but it looks like inflation might actually be going down.
So how's that work? Well, if you look back over the past three years, you see that the government did a lot to help people out during the pandemic. They gave aid to laid-off workers and troubled businesses, and that kept folks able to buy stuff even though the supply was messed up. But now, a lot of those pandemic problems are getting fixed, and the aid packages ain't as big as they used to be. Before, some folks were saying that the pandemic messed up the economy for good, especially when it came to people working.
But now we know that ain't entirely true. Some folks thought there were millions of "missing workers" who wouldn't come back after the pandemic. But it turns out that a lot of those folks were wrong. Older workers who retired early ain't as common as we thought, and net immigration is actually going up! That means we got a bunch of people here who are working and paying into the system, but they ain't gonna be taking much outta it for a while. That's good news for the long run.
So all in all, immigration is a good thing for our economy. If we had a sensible political system, we'd welcome more of it! And by the way, just 'cause a bunch of folks in New York City are foreign-born don't mean it's a terrible place. That's just a buncha hogwash from Fox News!
Hey, It's Me
Billy Bob here. Down here in West Virgina we like to think we are just as smart as them folks out there in LA or up there in New York or even as smart as some of them eggheads out in that valley they called Silicon. Sure we got some boys and a couple girls a bit slow, but I bet everywhere has got a few. But anyway, we love having y'all, so just sit yourself down and stay a while. And if youns in big hurry then Y'all just come back you here! Bless your heart!
