Identifying the impact of a particular policy change is difficult when so many things are happening at once. After years of steady increases, stock prices have been flat since the passage of the tax changes, while volatility has increased. Tariffs have increased costs and raised uncertainty. Wage growth has continued to accelerate, albeit from a low base.
Together, these forces could have persuaded executives to cut back on investment, MandA, and shareholder payouts. It is possible that the corporate tax changes helped offset all this, which would explain why nothing seems to have changed. It is also possible, however, that the tax changes were a pointless transfer that simply gave companies more earnings to retain rather than spend.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/last-years-corporate-tax-overhaul-hasnt-made-much-of-a-difference-1544226832
Also after the tax code revision of 2017, there is little dramatic change to see in the monthly employment figures; however, on average, may be even declining (see figure)
(click on figure to enlarge)
https://www.statista.com/chart/14962/seasonally-adjusted-non-farm-job-creation-in-the-us/
But if we try to separate the forest from the trees, we see that unemployment figures that declined during the Obama administration continue to decline in the Trump Administration (see figure).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/10/30/two-charts-show-trumps-job-gains-are-just-a-continuation-from-obamas-presidency/#7583d4ad1af3
The decline in unemployment of blacks is similar but with the most recent figures at 6% whereas it is slightly above 3% for Whites, well under 3% for Asians and about 4% for Hispanics:
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm
Looking back further, average monthly jobs growth during the Obama administration were much better than George W. Bush (Bush-43) and more than double the numbers for George H.W. Bush (Bush-41). The record goes to Bill Clinton with Ronald Reagon in second place. Whether the Donald Trump administration can beat the Obama administration is doubtful. For one thing, we are told that we are at full employment. If this is true, then the expansion of the labor force will be difficult.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=monthly+job+growth+chart&fr=yhs-itm-001&hspart=itm&hsimp=yhs-001&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.com%2Fsites%2Fmsnbc%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Fembedded_image%2Fpublic%2F12.5.14.2.jpg%3Fitok%3DPdfGD40W#id=3&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fkpbs.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2017%2F01%2F06%2Faverage-monthly-job-growth-by-president_chartbuilder_custom-579c306428b5841980615f54c79286457c6c2377_t614.png%3Fa3ca5463f16dc11451266bb717d38a6025dcea0e&action=click Note: This exceedingly long URL does work and shows many graphs.
The hourly wage increases are misleading because one just feels that when we are told that hourly wages increased by 3.1%, there is a tendency to feel that everyone'e wages increased by 3.1%. Of course this is not true. Consider Silicon Valley:
Only wages at the very highest levels increased, after adjusting for inflation, over the last 20 years. Between 1997 and 2017, hourly wages for the top 10 percent increased by 0.7 percent. The most significant decline was for those at the middle income level. Those in the 50th percentile have seen wages decline by 14.2 percent over the same 20-year period, while those in the 60th percentile have seen a 13.2 percent decline.
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More than a third of the workforce, or 57.3 million Americans, are now freelancing, according to a 2017 report by Upwork. In San Mateo and Santa Clara counties alone, there are an estimated 39,000 workers who are contracted to tech companies, according to one estimate by University of California Santa Cruz researchers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/03/in-silicon-valley-wages-are-down-for-everyone-but-the-top-10-percent.html
Large companies are even laying off workers. For example, Verizon has announced a program where 10,400 employees will be let go.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/10/verizon-says-10400-employees-have-been-accepted-as-a-part-of-a-voluntary-program-to-leave-the-business.html
For more companies cutting jobs after passage of the 2017 tax cut, see: https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/these-companies-started-firing-employees-right-after-getting-tax-cuts-from-trump.html/
At the same time, small business are having difficulty finding employees.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/10/a-tight-labor-market-is-forcing-small-business-to-juice-job-offers.html
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