Wealth & Money Quote by Alexis Herman

“Dynamic” is doing a lot of diplomatic work here. Alexis Herman’s line arrives in that classic public-servant register where candor is carefully padded: yes, people are getting hired; yes, people are getting laid off; and no, the speaker isn’t going to let the conversation settle on a single, politically damaging number. The phrasing is almost bureaucratic tai chi, redirecting force rather than absorbing it.

The intent is stabilization. By repeating “dynamic economy,” Herman reframes volatility as vitality. “Dynamic” sounds modern, competitive, even slightly heroic; it turns churn into proof of motion. That matters in the late-1990s policy mood, when globalization, tech-driven restructuring, and declining lifetime employment were changing what “a good economy” felt like on the ground. Stock indices and GDP could look strong while whole towns watched their anchor employers downsize. Herman is offering a bridge between macro triumphalism and micro anxiety.

The subtext is an argument about responsibility. Job loss isn’t presented as a failure of governance or corporate choice, but as an inevitable feature of a living system. That move invites patience and flexibility from workers while implicitly positioning government as manager of transitions, not guardian of permanence. Notice the tautology of “the fact of the matter is”: it signals realism, yet what follows is less a fact than a frame. The sentence doesn’t deny pain; it domesticates it, asking the public to accept churn as the price of staying “dynamic.”