Still, economic growth has decelerated. GDP growth in the third quarter barely topped 2%, and it's expected to slow further in last three months of the year.
Factories in Michigan lost more than 4,000 jobs in the first nine months of the year. (This excludes October, when jobs were temporarily lost to the UAW strike at General Motors.) Wisconsin factories lost more than 7,000 jobs. And Pennsylvania suffered the nation's biggest factory job losses with 7,400.
ACF Industries announced in November that it was cutting 148 jobs at its train car factory in Milton, Pa.
"They want everybody out by the end of the year," employee James Dolan told WNEP-TV in Scranton. "I feel sorry for the guys in their 50s where they have to find something else."
Factories — many of which depend on global supply chains and healthy export markets — are particularly vulnerable to the trade war. The much larger services sector — including restaurants and hospitals, which cater to local customers — is more insulated. Services accounted for the bulk of the new jobs in November, with 206,000 added.
The other big weak spot is farming, which has suffered a one-two punch of bad weather, which makes it hard to grow crops, and tariffs, which make it hard to sell what you do grow. In the 12 months ending in September, farm bankruptcies jumped 24%, to their highest level since 2011.
Just to add a little more balance to Red's single-indicator obsession. And keep in mind that factory jobs tend to be higher paying than service jobs, and in their communities factory jobs are estimated to create 4-7 jobs from the ripple effect. Hurting manufacturers, while shoveling money onto Wall St. traders and fund managers, is not a good longterm approach.
And hurting farmers, of course, guts the rural communities that largely voted for Trump. When a farm family that's been on a piece of land for many generations has to sell off, what do we lose? Real stewardship of that land, by people who have the experience of several generations in figuring out what works and what doesn't with that piece of land, and a clear understanding of what's needed to keep that farm going for future generations, rather than just reaping some fast profits to please the shareholders of a corporate ag behemoth.