July 4, 2017
Today is July 4th. Our country is almost 250 years old. If you read the headlines, you would think that our country is in more trouble than it has ever has been. True, our country is not perfect, and certainly the fighting emanating from our Nation’s Capital does not make us the envy of the world politically. On the other hand, if you take a look at the numbers, our country is again leading the western world with regard to the recovery from the deep world recession.
After peaking at over 10% during the recession, our present unemployment rate is less than 5.0%. The average unemployment rate of the European Member countries is well over 7.0%. During the latter stages of the recovery we have been consistently adding between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs per month. Concurrently, our real estate market has regained just about all of the losses sustained during the recession.
Some are wary that the Federal Reserve Board has raised interest rates four times during the past 18 months. The fact that the Fed is comfortable raising rates for the first time in a decade is evidence that they are getting more comfortable regarding the state of the economy. That does not mean that our economy, our jobs picture and our real estate market does not have room for improvement — which is why rates continue to be historically very low. But we have come a long way and we continue to improve. Hopefully we will see more of this improvement when the jobs report is released this Friday. In the meantime, happy 4th of July.
Source: Origination Pro