WASHINGTON — U.S. hiring jumped last month, and many more people were encouraged to look for work, showing that the economy remains robust despite threats from China’s viral outbreak, an ongoing trade war and struggles at Boeing.
The strong job growth gives President Donald Trump more evidence for his assertion that the economy is flourishing under his watch. It may also complicate the argument his Democratic presidential rivals are making that the economy isn’t benefiting everyday Americans.
The Labor Department said Friday that employers added a robust 225,000 jobs in January. At the same time, a half-million Americans, feeling better about their job prospects, streamed into the job market. Most found jobs. But those that didn’t were newly counted as unemployed, and their numbers raised the jobless rate to 3.6 percent from December’s half-century low of 3.5 percent.
Seven Democratic presidential candidates were to debate later Friday in New Hampshire. Leading contenders, notably Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have built campaigns around the argument that the middle class has been mostly left out of an economic expansion that has disproportionately served the wealthy.
The outcome of the presidential race could hinge in part on whether enough voters agree that inequality and rising costs for services such as health care, housing and college education outweigh the benefits from nearly 11 years of economic growth.
“Democratic primary voters are very open to messages about the economy doing badly,” said Jason Furman, a top economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, said.
Furman added, though, “I don’t know that that would be consistent for the electorate as a whole.”
As the election intensifies, views of the economy remain broadly polarized. According to a Pew Research Center survey released Friday, 81 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the economy is excellent or good. Only 39 percent of Democrats and those leaning Democratic say so.
The public overall, Pew notes, holds a more positive view of the economy than at any point in the past 20 years. Fifty-seven percent say they think it is excellent or good, up from 32 percent in 2016.
Trump and his team can point to several positive trends in Friday’s jobs report, though his Democratic opponents can cite some evidence for their contrasting views, too.
Robust hiring has picked up from earlier this year, when the trade war with China raged, and is helping remedy one of the economy’s key weaknesses: Even as the unemployment rate fell from a peak of 10 percent in 2009, millions of Americans were discouraged about finding a job and stopped looking for one. Some returned to school or stayed home to care for relatives.
Yet that trend has nearly reversed itself since 2016. The proportion of Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 through 54 — who either have a job or are looking for one has reached its highest point since September 2008, just before the recession intensified. Economists typically focus on the prime-age population because it filters out the effects of retirement among the vast baby boomer generation.
Trump officials are also stressing that the job market is now benefiting a wider range of demographic groups.
