Breakingviews: Trump’s job spin pales beside Obama’s recovery

Donald Trump likes to take credit, whether it's due or not. His latest claim, made on Wednesday, is that he has spurred the planned creation of 8,000 new jobs at U.S. cellphone giant Sprint and satellite startup OneWeb. These roles, however, were already in the works. Economic activity under outgoing President Barack Obama is creating 180,000 positions every month. Once in the White House, Trump will need more than double-talk to match that pace for long. The $35 billion Sprint is 83 percent owned by SoftBank , whose boss Masayoshi Son earlier this month vaguely pledged to invest $50 billion in the United States – most likely from a proposed $100 billion investment fund, itself announced before November's election – and create 50,000 jobs. This figure, it turns out, includes the 5,000 "new" roles at Sprint. And OneWeb's 3,000 positions reflect the company's already-revealed ambitions over four years following a $1.2 billion investment from SoftBank, also announced earlier in December. More from Breakingviews : American inequality will widen under Trump in 2017 Trump has used similarly misleading spin to tout job preservation at Ford Motor and air-conditioner maker Carrier. Sprint, in a statement, essentially went along with the rhetoric. Son, however, has powerful reasons to cozy up to the president-elect. The Obama administration squashed his plan to merge Sprint with rival T-Mobile US . Making the hefty investment pay off may depend on getting another chance. The broader reality is that the U.S. economy is in good shape, having been recovering – albeit at an unspectacular pace – for most of Obama's eight-year tenure. Through November, 180,000 net new jobs have been generated on average each month this year. The unemployment rate has tumbled to 4.6 percent, less than half the post-crisis peak and, just as significantly, near what economists regard as indicating full employment. Even if Trump sustainably feeds the animal spirits of business leaders – a notion that stock investors have embraced since his election – tightening labor-market conditions make a decline in the pace of new job creation the safer bet by the time he is comfortable in the Oval Office. After his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump may not find it so easy to obscure the bigger picture with exaggerated one-off boasts. For more independent commentary and analysis from Reuters Breakingviews, visit breakingviews.com

President-elect Donald Trump delivered remarks to reporters at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Dec. 28, 2016.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Donald Trump likes to take credit, whether it's due or not. His latest claim, made on Wednesday, is that he has spurred the planned creation of 8,000 new jobs at U.S. cellphone giant Sprint and satellite startup OneWeb. These roles, however, were already in the works. Economic activity under outgoing President Barack Obama is creating 180,000 positions every month. Once in the White House, Trump will need more than double-talk to match that pace for long.