After the latest jobs report had come out, US President Donald Trump responded on Twitter by touting the decline in unemployment amongst African Americans.

The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, “Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good.”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018

Predictably, this led many on Twitter to note that job growth under Trump in 2017 was actually lower than job growth under Obama in 2016. In fact, job growth in 2017 was the weakest year of job growth since 2010 when it was still unclear how well the US could recover from the Great Financial Crisis. That’s to be expected though.

It is to be expected that job growth slows as the business cycle lengthens. This is normal https://t.co/R6eJWvTTnQ

— Edward Harrison (@edwardnh) January 6, 2018

You don’t get the same level of job growth after eight years of an economic upturn as you do after one. And this is borne out by the statistics. Take a look at the rolling growth numbers. This is a data series that goes all the way back to 1939.

 Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve

In every single business cycle in the last 80 years, job growth has peaked mid-cycle.

Doesn’t this make intuitive sense though? Companies respond haltingly to recovery, just as everyone else does. At some point, when it is clear the upturn is for real and has legs, hiring ramps up to a high as companies make up for lost time. Eventually though, as the labor market tightens, the pace of job growth declines. It doesn’t fall off a cliff and throw us into recession, the pace of job growth merely recedes. And again, if you look at the data, we’re talking two or three years before the cycle ends — often longer.

This cycle is no different. And to wit, Donald Trump has to be careful for touting the jobs numbers because we should expect the pace of growth in employment to slow further still.