are in a low-hire, low-fire labor market. <\/a><\/p>\n“The Trump administration was really focus on is shifting our economy from really a government-funded economy, where jobs are basically coming from the government sector and really now a private sector economy,” Ortiz said. <\/p>\n
He added that almost 300,00 government jobs were lost. <\/p>\n
“The government, let’s face it, was just too fat, too bureaucratic. And I think that was a meaningful move that the Trump administration did. And now we’re much more in a healthy environment of private sector job growth,” Ortiz said. <\/p>\n
When it comes to interest rates, Ortiz said he doesn’t think the U.S. will see another drop in interest rates before Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell leaves the job. <\/p>\n
“Quite frankly, the American small business owner and consumer really need that, those lower interest rates,” Ortiz said. <\/p>\n
Despite the optimism going into 2026, Ortiz said businesses are having problems with access and cost of credit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s the economic forecast for 2026? Alfred Ortiz, CEO of the Job Creators Network, joined The National News…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[104159,72,9921,119381,31082,113,61,5232,60,119380,31886,2237],"class_list":{"0":"post-234223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-2026-forecast","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-consumer-spending","11":"tag-credit-access","12":"tag-economic-outlook","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-interest-rates","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-job-creators-network","18":"tag-private-sector","19":"tag-unemployment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}