How Close Is the U.S. to Full Employment? Trump and Yellen Disagree

[McFurd]

Bloomberg - 3/17/2017 - Peter Coy - Trump's job goals are rubbing up against the Fed's determination to keep inflation under control. How many more jobs can the U.S. economy add before it runs out of ready, willing, and able workers? There's no more important debate right now, and key players disagree on how much slack remains in the labor market before employment growth ignites unacceptably high wage hikes and inflation.Trump exulted over the better-than-expected increase of 235,000 jobs in February, casting aside his previous doubts about the reliability of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Officially, the White House committed earlier this year to creating 25 million jobs over the next decade, a period that would extend even beyond a second Trump term. That's an average of more than 200,000 jobs per month. The president appears to hopes to achieve that target by raising the economy's growth rate to 4 percent, although more recently Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has used a figure of around 3 percent. The problem is that while 200,000 monthly job growth is possible when the economy is still rebounding from a period of underemployment, it becomes far more difficult from here on in. Read more @https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-17/how-close-is-the-u-s-to-full-employment-trump-and-yellen-disagree