AMID MEDIA’S RECESSION PANIC, US ENDS DECADE WITH ROBUST, BOOMING JOBS NUMBERS:

The final jobs report released in the 2010s shows the economy is both vibrant and growing.

This may or may not come as an unwelcome surprise to those who have spent the last several months warning that a recession is right around the corner.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that employers added an astounding 266,000 jobs in November, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.5%, its lowest point since the year astronauts first walked on the moon.

The U6 unemployment rate, which is a broader measure of real unemployment, registered at 7.2% in November, which is on par with numbers reported over the summer. The labor force participation rate meanwhile held steady at about 63.2%, while wage growth actually increased by 3.1% over the last year.

In other words, it is an excellent report that “crushes” all earlier expectations, especially in the “jobs added” category. In fact, to put Friday’s numbers in perspective, Bloomberg News’s rosiest estimates predicted 180,000 new jobs. The actual number surpasses even those expectations.

This is good news for everyone — everyone, that is, except for the people who have cheered both explicitly and implicitly for a recession as a means to oust President Trump from office.

Democratic Party operatives with bylines typically get a case of what Virginia Postrel dubbed “Depression lust” in 2008 when there’s a Republican in the White House, and an election is coming up. Sure, it’s battlefield preparation for their presidential candidate, but their economic gloom is also driven by the contractions of their own industry: Media layoffs: 7,700 jobs cut this year at CNN, BuzzFeed, newspapers, and more.