and also matches a 49-year low. and the new york times headline reads, we ran out of words to describe how good the job numbers are. but it s not just unemployment. wages are up as well. hourly earnings have risen 2.7% in the last year. here to crunch the numbers, cnn senior economics analyst and former trump economic adviser stephen moore and senior finance correspondent for business insider linette lopez. stephen, no doubt about it, the numbers are really good. what s behind the growth? well, i think there s a trump effect here. i m a little biased. i was one of his advisers on the economy. but, you know, it s funny i saw the president a few weeks ago in mar-a-lago and we chatted for a few minutes. i said look, the economic performance, this tax cut is working better than we anticipated. you think it s the tax cut? i think it s the whole package. the fact we have a pro-business
year 2000 leading the president to tweet, just out, under 4% unemployment. meantime, witch hunt. you have to admit. black unemployment is down to 6.6%, an all-time low. does he deserve credit? joining me now, christopher lue, former deputy secretary of labor for president obama and steven moore, chief economist at the heritage foundation and cnn senior economics analyst. christopher, if these numbers came in on obama s watch, you d be psyched, no? yeah, the numbers did come in under our watch. if we re looking simply at african-american unemployment, that dropped 9 percentage points since the peak of the recession. it s dropped another percentage point during the trump administration. so if we re going to give credit, let s give 90% of that credit to president obama and 10% to president trump. steven, i imagine your ratio is slightly difference. go ahead.
the new unemployment numbers are historic, falling below 4% for the first time since the year 2000, leading the president to tweet on friday, just out, 3.9% unemployment. 4% is broken. in the meantime, witch hunt. you ve got to admit, he s got a point, right? there is very little bandwidth being spent on this achievement and black unemployment is down to 6.6%, an all-time low. so does he deserve credit? joining me now, christopher lou, former deputy secretary of labor for president obama. and senior economics analyst christopher, if these numbers came in on obama s watch, you d be psyched, no? the numbers did come in under our watch. if we re looking simply at african-american unemployment, that dropped 9 percentage points during since the peak of the recession. it s dropped another percentage
popular deductions. it depends where you live, how much money you take and the deductions you take. the goal is to cut. that is the centerpiece. the white house says that will grow the economy. is the goal more to cut taxes for businesses than individuals. joining us is senior economics analyst, former adviser to the trump campaign, stephen moore, and chief economist at jpmorgan chase. anthony, is this primarily a middleclass tax cut? it clearly is not. when you look at the numbers, $1.5 trillion worth of tax cuts, you essentially have estate tax taking 34% of the cuts can. the estate tax really only hit the top 0.2% of all the estates out there. to me when you look at these numbers, it basically tells us
he also, the president says that he s banking on the democrats to actually come to the table, tweeting out just this week, quote, the approval process for the biggest tax cut and tax reform package in the history of our country will soon begin. move fast, congress. there haven t been any specifics so far. but some of the president s main proposals have included simplifying the tax code. as part of that, he wants to reduce the tax brackets from three down from the current seven. and probably the biggest change would be in the corporate tax rate. the president wants to drop it to a standard 15% right now, it s about 35% for most companies. lower income tax rates are also part of the plan, including dropping taxes for the wealthiest of americans. i want to bring in steven moore. he is cnn s senior economics analyst and a former economic adviser for the trump campaign. and ken rogof, a professor of