You know things are going well when the scary economic stories are about “labor shortages.” That’s where the economy is today, and we hope President Trump and his critics can both learn a lesson.

At the end of April, 6.7 million jobs sat open in America. At the same time, 6.3 million people were out of work and seeking work. (The numbers are seasonally adjusted.) For the first time since the Labor Department started measuring these numbers in 2000, there are more jobs unfilled than there are unemployed job-seekers.

The unemployment rate is an astoundingly low 3.8 percent. This tight labor market means higher wages. Hourly pay is up 2.8 percent for nonsupervisors, year-over-year. In some parts of the economy, the raises are more dramatic. “Shale Country Is Out of Workers,” a Bloomberg article about North Dakota and Texas reported in a Wednesday headline, “and Dangling 100% Pay Hikes.”

So what are the lessons? The first is that nobody should ever listen to Paul Krugman when he has politics on the brain. “So we are very probably looking at a global recession,” the Nobel laureate wrote on election night, “with no end in sight.”

Krugman’s error was perhaps believing the economy cared about the same things he cares about. Instead, the economy cares about whether the marketplace is free to allocate resources where they are most valuable. That’s where the pro-growth policies of the Trump administration have aimed their economic policies.

These policies have turbo-charged the economic recovery Trump inherited. The shale country story is one of an America willing to tap its valuable resources. The Trump administration and the Republican Congress has blocked or rolled back many overbearing regulations from the late Obama years.

More energy exploration means more energy jobs, as the wages in Williston, N.D., show. It also puts downward pressure on energy costs for manufacturing and transportation, which in turn means more investment opportunities, thus more jobs.

The biggest recent reduction in costs for business comes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. By slashing the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21, that law vastly expands the number of ventures that are worth the investment. Increased business investment means more hiring.

There’s something in common among these Trump policies that have spurred growth. It is not that the government is creating growth, but that the government has gotten out of the way and let business do its thing. This should be a lesson for Democrats and the news media, who seem to think government is the agent of economic growth.

It should also be a lesson for Trump, who is talking about a few government interventions to drive job growth. Notably, he’s slapping tariffs on imports from China and other countries supposedly to protect American manufacturing. He’s also eyeing subsidies for the coal industry.

But government doesn’t create wealth. It can only redistribute wealth. Free and open markets create wealth.

So the good jobs picture is reason for Trump to brag, but it’s also cause for humility. The White House should abandon the idea of juicing favored industries with protectionism or subsidies. Trump should take China’s concessions to buy more U.S. goods, and call that a win instead of escalating into a trade war.

Then Trump should keep doing what he's done right, which is to get out of the way.