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Trump and Carrier: how a modern economy is like a parking garage

The economy is not a fixed set of jobs getting shifted around a global chess board - it is in a state of constant churn.

Published Fri, Dec 2, 2016 · 09:50 PM

IN the two hours that President-elect Donald Trump spent flying to Indiana on Thursday to boast that he saved 1,000 jobs, about 6,000 private-sector jobs in the United States were probably destroyed.

It's a surprising statistic - one that speaks to the constant state of change in the labour market. My calculation is based on government data that shows that every three months roughly 6.7 million private-sector jobs are destroyed, which in an expanding labour market is offset by the creation of nearly 7.2 million jobs.

Over a full presidential term, more than 100 million jobs will be destroyed. Mr Trump can't expect to stanch much of that flow.

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