Tag: jobs

Trump Makes Up 45,000 New Mining Jobs

President Donald Trump boasted Monday that the nation added 45,000 mining jobs recently — but there’s scant data to back that up. One thing there is evidence for: Only 800 coal mining jobs have been created during his tenure.

“In Pennsylvania, two weeks ago, they opened a mine, the first mine that was opened in decades….Well, we picked up 45,000 mining jobs in a very short period of time,” Trump said during an event pegged to American manufacturing. “Everybody was saying, ‘Well, you won’t get any mining jobs,’ we picked up 45,000 mining jobs. Well, the miners are very happy with Trump and with Pence, and we’re very proud of that.”

President Donald Trump boasted Monday that the nation added 45,000 mining jobs recently — but there’s scant data to back that up. One thing there is evidence for: Only 800 coal mining jobs have been created during his tenure.

“In Pennsylvania, two weeks ago, they opened a mine, the first mine that was opened in decades….Well, we picked up 45,000 mining jobs in a very short period of time,” Trump said during an event pegged to American manufacturing. “Everybody was saying, ‘Well, you won’t get any mining jobs,’ we picked up 45,000 mining jobs. Well, the miners are very happy with Trump and with Pence, and we’re very proud of that.”

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to bring back coal jobs and attacked Hillary Clinton for turning her back on the industry.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates there are roughly 50,800 coal mining jobs nationwide, 800 of which have been added since Trump took office. (The six months before that, under President Barack Obama’s administration, 1,300 coal jobs were added.)

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Trump’s numbers. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt made a similar claim speaking about all mining and logging jobs earlier this year, earning a PolitiFact ruling of “mostly false.”

BLS data estimates the nation has added roughly 41,500 new mining and logging jobs in the first six months of 2017, but just 1,000 of them are mining (not including oil and gas mining jobs, which account for another couple thousand.)

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The coal industry often creates spinoff jobs as mining towns need doctors, schools and diners, for instance. There are notably many truck drivers, electricians and other professionals working with coal companies whose livelihood depends on coal production, but these jobs are not counted in federal BLS data on coal mining, according to Terry Headley, communications director for the American Coal Council.

The Pennsylvania mine opening that Trump touted on Monday is expected to create 70 jobs.

[NBC News]

Trump Says He Created 600,000 Jobs. Not True

“We’ve created over 600,000 jobs already over a very short period of time and it’s going to really start catching on now,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House, flanked by his top advisers and the CEOs who are members of his Business Advisory Council.

He repeated the statement later at a press conference: “Already we’ve created more than almost [sic] 600,000 jobs.”

Official government data does not back up that claim.

According to CNNMoney’s Trump Jobs Tracker, 317,000 jobs have been created since Trump took office. The president is trying to take credit for nearly double that number of jobs.

The ultimate authority on how many jobs are created (or lost) each month is the US Labor Department. CNNMoney’s 317,000 figure includes how many jobs the Labor Department reported were created in February (219,000) and March (98,000).

A White House spokesman said Trump is including all the job added in January as well (216,000). Trump was only in office for 11.5 days that month.

But even if you give him all of the gains for January, that still only brings the tally to 533,000 jobs created so far in 2017.

The math doesn’t quite add up to 600,000.

Trump likes to count job promises

There’s ongoing debate over whether a president should take credit for creating jobs at all. Most of the hiring is done by the private sector. But there’s a case to be made that government policies on taxes, regulations, trade, etc. do influence whether businesses want to hire or not.

“The president’s comments touting the administration’s economic record accurately reflect the growing optimism about his policies and the future outlook for the country,” a White House spokesman told CNNMoney.

Trump has frequently said he’s influenced companies like Ford, Charter Communications, General Motors and ExxonMobil to hire more workers, even though some of the businesses themselves refuse to give Trump credit for their hiring decisions.

Then there’s the fact that some of the jobs these companies are touting as new hires are part of projects that were in the works long before Trump was elected. (CNNMoney has a running fact check of these announcements here).

Trump vs. Obama

The bottom line is: Yes, business and consumer optimism has picked up since Trump won the election. That is likely a factor in some hiring decisions by businesses. But the reality is the economy has added an average of 178,000 jobs a month so far this year. That’s very close to, and even slightly lower than, the average last year (187,000 a month) when President Obama was in office.

Trump Wrongly Takes Credit for Planned $1.33 Billion Toyota Spending

President Donald Trump took credit for Toyota Motor Corp. investing $1.33 billion in an existing U.S. factory, championing spending by a Japanese automaker he’s blasted for building a plant in Mexico.

The outlays in Georgetown, Kentucky, aren’t new — they’ve been in the works for years. But the way they’re being marketed is. Instead of emphasizing cost efficiency, Toyota is highlighting ample spending and the previously announced addition of 700 jobs. The president has taken notice.

Toyota’s announcement “is further evidence that manufacturers are now confident that the economic climate has greatly improved under my administration,” Trump said in the automaker’s statement Monday.

The bigger the U.S. investment the better right now for Toyota. Trump singled out the company in January for its plan to build a Corolla small-car factory in Mexico. As Toyota’s North American Chief Executive Officer Jim Lentz discussed setting up autonomous- and connected-car business units in the U.S. with Trump last month, the president cut him off and said the company needed to “build those new plants here.”

While Toyota is pleased Trump recognized the significance of its investment, according to Wil James, the Kentucky factory’s president, the company started preparing for the redesigned Camry that will be built at the plant during Barack Obama’s administration.

“We’ve been working on this Camry now for over three years, so this is not something that’s just brand new and picked up most recently,” James said in an interview Monday on Bloomberg Television.

As part of the $10 billion that Toyota plans to invest in the U.S. over the next five years, the company’s spending in Kentucky paves the way for output of the redesigned Camry sedan later this year. The car will be the first in North America to adopt the Toyota New Global Architecture system for designing, engineering and manufacturing vehicles.

In describing the system referred to as TNGA in March 2015, Toyota said it was aiming to reduce the amount of spending required to prepare the production line for a new model by about half. The Toyota City, Japan-based company is avoiding any emphasis of the frugal benefits of TNGA with regards to its plans in Georgetown.

“This is the largest investment in our plant’s history,” James said in the statement. “This major overhaul will enable the plant to stay flexible and competitive, further cementing our presence in Kentucky.”

Toyota will spend the $1.33 billion over the next two or three years, James said in a press conference at the Georgetown plant. It’s only after the money is spent — including on more flexible equipment in the welding shop and elsewhere — that TNGA’s expected cost savings will kick in, he said.

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin predicted the state’s best year ever for capital investments by big companies during the event at the plant.

(h/t Bloomberg)

Reality

Toyota made the announcement in May 2014.

Trump’s budget director claims Obama was ‘manipulating’ jobs data

President Trump’s budget director claims the Obama administration was “manipulating” jobs data.

Mick Mulvaney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he has long thought the previous administration framed data to make the unemployment rate “look smaller than it actually was.”

“What you should really look at is the number of jobs created,” Mulvaney said on “State of the Union.” “We’ve thought for a long time, I did, that the Obama administration was manipulating the numbers, in terms of the number of people in the workforce, to make the unemployment rate — that percentage rate — look smaller than it actually was.”

Trump repeatedly railed on the unemployment rate during Obama’s time in office as a “hoax.”

Trump once claimed that he had “heard” the rate could be as high as 42% — even though at the time it was about 5%.

Economists debate the best way to calculate statistics. But there is no evidence that the Bureau of Labor Statistics fudges its unemployment data.
The BLS is the Department of Labor agency responsible for compiling a vast store of government data about jobs that is used by businesses, economists and investors to judge the health of the U.S. economy.

“During the four years I served as commissioner, the administration didn’t try to manipulate the numbers at all,” said Erica Groshen, who served as BLS commissioner from January 2013 to January 2017.

The agency has used the same method for calculating the unemployment rate since 1940.

The monthly report is based on two surveys. One queries American households to produce the unemployment rate, and the other surveys businesses about the number of jobs added or lost each month.
The BLS also publishes “alternative” measures of employment each month, which include many different metrics for the public and politicians to review.

Despite Trump’s past feelings on the jobs report, the president changed his tune Friday after a positive showing: The economy added 235,000 new jobs during his first full month in office, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%.
Said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer: “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: ‘They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.'”

Friday’s report marked the 18th month in a row that unemployment was at or below 5% — a level considered low by most economists.

(h/t CNN)

Media

Trump Praises Exxon Announcement on Old Investments

President Donald Trump heralded ExxonMobil’s announcement Monday that it’s investing in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. — even though at least some of the investment started years ago.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods said the company would invest $20 billion in manufacturing projects along the Gulf Coast. But at some of the spending started in 2013 and is expected to continue through at least 2022, Exxon said in a statement. Exxon said at least one of the projects — an aviation lubricants plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — had already been completed.

Those facts didn’t deter Trump, who used the occasion to shower praise on the giant oil and gas company that until recently was led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“45,000 construction & manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Gulf Coast region,” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon. “$20 billion investment. We are already winning again, America!”

In a statement from the White House, Trump said: “This is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work.”

The White House statement quoted Woods praising Trump. “Private sector investment is enhanced by this Administration’s support for smart regulations that support growth while protecting the environment,” the CEO said.

Woods took over as Exxon’s CEO in January, following Tillerson’s departure. Tillerson, who had lunch with Trump on Monday, has appeared to be out of the loop on a number of key issues and has kept a low profile within the administration.

Under his agreement with the Office of Government Ethics, Tillerson is barred from any matter involving Exxon through the end of the year. And he has until May 2 to finish divesting his stock holdings in the company, which are estimated at about $55 million. That raises the possibility Tillerson still holds a stake in the company for now. The federal law against conflicts of interest exempts the president but does apply to the secretary of state.

Spokesmen for the White House and the State Department did not immediately answer questions about whether Trump and Tillerson discussed the investment at their lunch Monday and whether Tillerson has already liquidated his holdings in Exxon.

In his announcement, Woods said that Exxon’s goal is to create 35,000 construction jobs and 12,000 full-time jobs, Woods said. The company has not said how many of the 11 projects announced Monday were planned under Tillerson.

The strategy of CEOs re-announcing old investments in the Trump era is not new. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son announced after a December meeting with Trump a tech fund that would invest $50 billion in the U.S. Trump publicized Son’s plan despite the fact that the investment had been part of a previously announced plan.

(h/t Politico)

 

Trump Policy Staffers Quit After Not Being Paid

Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.

“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”

Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.

The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.

“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.

“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”

There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.

“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.

“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”

The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.

The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Donald Trump and City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Now Also Feuding

After Donald Trump compared it to a “war zone” on Tuesday, the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, joined the parents of a dead soldier, our country’s fire marshals, Paul Ryan and a human baby as the most recent addition to Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of mortal enemies.

At a rally in Virginia, Trump said the city of 49,673, which he had flown into the night before, “looked like a war zone where you (once had) these massive plants,” according to the Associated Press.

Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian, said the words came shortly before noon Tuesday.

Tuesday night, Harrisburg fired back, saying in a statement that Trump made “an unfortunate mistake” disparaging the city “after a mere glance from the window of his airplane.”

Mr. Trump has made an unfortunate mistake in disparaging Pennsylvania’s capital city after a mere glance from the window of his airplane. Harrisburg is renowned as the heart of our commonwealth and a capital of unique beauty and charm.

 

Mr. Trump should know that Harrisburg and its residents are an integral part of the United States, which he is vying to lead. Its rich history and natural beauty have won both the respect and acclaim of some of America’s greatest leaders and patriots.

(h/t Gawker, PennLive)

Trump To Pay Thousands For Retaliating Against Workers On Day He Accepts The GOP Nomination

Just a few hours before he officially accepts the presidential nomination of the Republican party, Donald Trump agreed to pay a $11,200 federal settlement for retaliating against workers who voted to unionize at his eponymous Las Vegas hotel.

Trump, who claims he “never settles” when sued, agreed to pay the workers after the National Labor Relations Board found that Trump’s corporation had unfairly challenged the union vote and illegally retaliated against the workers who led the organization effort. Trump must now pay back wages to two workers, one of whom the hotel fired and another who was denied a promotion for convincing her 500-plus co-workers to join the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas. Under the terms of the settlement, Trump did not admit breaking federal labor laws.

Workers at the hotel told reports at the LA Times that the Trump corporation threatened and intimidated them in the lead up to the union vote.

Trump co-owns the Vegas hotel with mogul Phil Ruffin, who took the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to extol Trump’s virtues as a boss.

“As a result of his vision, he’s put tens of thousands of American workers to work,” Ruffin said. “And these are high-paid jobs.”

But the workers employed at Trump’s Vegas hotel tell a different story.

Trump hotel housekeeper Maria Jaramillo told ThinkProgress in February that she is paid much less and has much fewer health benefits than workers at other hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

“At Mandalay Bay I had health insurance for free, a retirement [account], every year I got a raise, I got holiday pay,” she said, explaining that she left that job to raise her children and couldn’t get it back. “Over here [at Trump International] we don’t get an [annual] raise, we have to pay for our insurance, and we have no retirement. It’s a big difference. I’m not making enough to give my kids a better future.”

The Trump International Hotel pays its workers, on average, $3 an hour less than the city’s other hotels. And while the company was forced by the National Labor Relations Board to recognize the union earlier this year, they have so far refused to begin negotiating a contract.

“We deserve one. We’re not second-class workers,” Jaramillo said.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has pitched himself as a friend of the working class, mainly by promising to stop the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. Yet that message may not be resonating in Cleveland, the host city of the RNC.

A group of local workers gathered on the eve of the convention on Sunday to denounce Trump’s record of repeatedly refusing to pay workers and contractors he has hired, of opposing a raise in the federal minimum wage, and of fighting workers’ attempts to organize.

“We’ve all heard Mr. Trump’s appeals to working people,” said Mike Kilbane, a lifelong Cleveland resident and construction worker. “But it’s a ruse, a smokescreen. It’s faux populism, a sad attempt to divide the working class in this country.”

Citing Trump’s dealings with his workers in Las Vegas and elsewhere, Kilbane continued: “This man is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, someone who has known privilege and entitlement his entire life. He puts his own personal gain and profit over any other consideration, and he’ll do anything to make sure it continues.”

(h/t Think Progress)

Links

Culinary Workers Union 226 article.

Ivanka Trump Brand Also Outsourced

Ivanka Trump line made in China

On the campaign trail Trump has made slowing or stopping the outsourcing of jobs to other countries a major talk point. However it has been pointed out that Trump also engages in outsourcing and this also extends to the his Ivanka Trump brand, which included dresses, purses, shoes and other accessories that reflect Trump’s daughter’s taste.

Of the 838 Ivanka products advertised through the trump.com, none appear to be made exclusively in the U.S.; 628 are said to be “imported” and 354 made specifically in China.

Reality

If you are an American economist who believes that international trade is good for the U.S., there is nothing wrong with what the Trumps have been doing. Indeed, he and his daughter have been providing Americans with products they want at relatively low prices. But how do you reconcile a business model based on importing with professions of deep belief that manufacturing should be brought back to America?

Links

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-trumps-outrage-over-outsourcing-doesnt-apply-to-his-own-merchandise/

Trump Vows to Never Eat Oreo Cookies Again

Trump versus oreo cookies

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he will stop eating Oreos, a decision he came to after Nabisco parent company Mondelez International, announced last month that it’s replacing production lines in Chicago with new ones at a plant in Salinas, Mexico.

“I’m never eating Oreos again,” Trump said on Tuesday, reaffirming statements he first made last week at a rally in Alabama, where he said, “Mexico is the new China . . . I love Oreos. I will never eat them again. Nabisco closes the plant in Chicago and they are moving the plant to Mexico.”

Reality

Mondelez is not closing the Chicago plant, but it is cutting 600 jobs there as a result of the new investment in Mexico, the Associated Press reports. A spokesperson for Mondelez told the Associated Press that the company’s new investment of $130 million in Mexico is an effort to save production costs, as the new lines in Mexico will cost $46 million less per year than those in Chicago. Only two of the four new lines will make Oreo cookies.

Jobs moving out of the United States has been one of Trump’s signature positions and has struck a cord with his supporters. The irony is not lost that voters believe that a billionaire businessman would save them from billionaire businessmen.

Media

Links

http://fortune.com/2015/08/26/donald-trump-oreos/

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/about-trumps-oreo-boycott/

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