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Earlier this month, I wrote about the questionable jobs numbers being released by the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In that report, I pointed out how the Biden/Harris Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had been “criticized of late for political goal-seeking” – and rightfully so, it would now appear.
For those of you unhip to the term “goal-seeking,” it means Biden and Harris have been releasing economic data aimed at giving their sycophants in the media a narrative with which to propagandize the public… rather than providing them with accurate data to inform the public.
As I noted in my coverage, despite Biden/Harris’ claims of creating more than 15 million jobs since January 2021, the actual number of employed workers in the United States “has not changed in over a year – and remains roughly equivalent to where it was prior to the Covid-19 shutdowns.”
Or at least that was the case until this week… now it’s significantly worse.
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On Wednesday (August 21, 2024), BLS published its latest “preliminary benchmark revision” to the employment situation reports it releases on the first Friday of each month – reports which, incidentally, are almost always revised downward multiple times after their original, headline-grabbing publication.
So, having already adjusted the new employment totals downward, BLS announced on Wednesday that another 818,000 jobs – the equivalent of half a percent of the entire American workforce – had vanished. Or more accurately, never existed in the first place.
Or, if you prefer the parlance of the new left, they stopped identifying as real jobs.
This 818,000-job drop-off marked the biggest downward revision to the labor market since 2009 – and the second biggest downward revision ever.
Worth noting? The website Zero Hedge predicted this gap almost to the number back in March of this year…
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Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000 https://t.co/JZZxweddh9
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 28, 2024
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“The revisions confirm that – as we had been warning for much of the past year – the labor market started moderating much sooner than flawed conventional wisdom thought,” the website noted in assessing the government’s belated admission. “Putting it all together, we now know – as we reported first back in March – that the labor market is, and was, far weaker than conventionally believed.”
It also raises a critical question: Why is the government lying to us each month about the jobs market? And just as importantly… why aren’t the media outlets tasked with reporting these figures not holding them accountable for their lies?
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has long been used as a tool of propaganda by the executive branch,” noted Nicole Shanahan, a California businesswoman who is running as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s vice presidential nominee. “Here’s how: they distort definitions, manipulate data, exclude discouraged workers, and revise past reports to create narratives that fit the agenda of whichever administration is in power. This skews the actual economic picture and misleads citizens about the true state of our economy. It’s like a game of musical chairs, and neither side wants to be caught standing when the music stops. The Constitution doesn’t grant the government the authority to track unemployment statistics, so why do we even have this agency? Perhaps it’s time to get rid of it. Their $750M budget could surely be put to better use, and private companies already track U.S. unemployment for free. Win-win.”
Makes sense to me…
Of course the real issue isn’t fixing the government’s bad math, it’s figuring out how to actually create new jobs – a problem which is particularly pronounced here in South Carolina. So far, neither Harris nor former president Donald Trump have come up with anything resembling a plan to do that. Harris is overtly embracing communist principles, while Trump has come up with little more than fringe gimmicks.
America can – and must – do better.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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6 comments
The ZeroHedge article link is worth the read…the picture of distortion is actually even more alarming that what FITS summarizes. The ZH article notes that 10 out of 11 BLS labor reports were revised downward by substantial sums in 2023, and the trend goes back well into 2022. That’s almost unheard of. All told, when you compare all the BLS initial reports (which get all the media air time) to the subsequent revisions (which get minimal air time) the BLS overstated its job creation numbers by about 5 million jobs from 2022 to present, and the net result is effectively that employment levels are the same as they were just before the pandemic. ALSO, what additionally skews the picture is that BLS doesn’t really account for single persons holding multiple jobs – they just look at each job, and allow the public to assume that each job is held by a single person. ALSO, of the numbers of jobs restored after the pandemic, a huge percentage of them are filled by illegal immigrants…again, BLS doesn’t really highlight that in the public disclosures, allowing the public to think those job increases are for American, not boarder- jumpers.
I 100% agree that the 750M+ spent by the federal government on market metrics should be cut entirely…the public sector (like Bloomberg) provides all this information now, and more accurately.
Ah how quickly we forget when we want to. Its a hot summer day in August of 2019. Trump is railing that he is the greatest President in history and probably the greatest leader in the history of the world, that if Biden is elected your 401k will be devastated and the country will go into a depression. Suddenly the BLS announces it has overcounted jobs for the last year by 500,000. Even worse after the revision, the country had lost thousands more manufacturing jobs under Trump than previously thought. Had Trump been scamming the country or was this just what happens from time to time?
Should these corrections be necessary? I don’t know. Keeping up with job creation is hard, and the Fed has been trying to slow the extremely strong economy for over a year, to bring down inflation; which they have. But conspiracy is all that Trumpers like Will have. So if this is not further revised, Biden will have created, 14,200,000 jobs instead of 15 million, while Trump actually lost jobs during his administration. And no the jobs are not going to illegal aliens that is just as big a lie as the millions of illegals voting.
But you want to know the real news that we got this week. Since 1989 the US economy has created 51 million new jobs. 50 million of those were during Democratic administrations. And that number has been fact-checked.
Former President Bill Clinton: “Since the end of the Cold War, in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. … What’s the score? Democrats 50 (million), Republicans 1 (million).”
Mostly True.
The number of jobs created from 1989 through March 2024 — under Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — was 50.6 million. Of that number, a bit over 1 million, or about 2.6%, were created during the Republican presidencies.
Including the 617,000 jobs added since March, when we last fact-checked a claim like this, further tilts the Democratic advantage.
Uhm yeah…
Clinton is the “leader in job creation” but his “job creation number’ are largely due to the efforts of Mr. Newt and company (Republicans controlled both the house and senate for most of his term)
Reagan is next and his greatest period of “job growth” is the 6 years when the Republicans controlled the Senate.
Obama’s greatest period of “job growth” is again during a period when Republicans control Congress.
Hit submit a little soon…
The idea that presidents, in the modern era, can “create jobs” is so farcical as to make those who argue that they do look foolish. They can and often do kill jobs with their “…phone and pen…” (see Keystone or Obama’s “Green Jobs” actions) but no one starts hiring people when a Biden or a Bush talks about “…shovel ready jobs..”.
If you want to give them credit for anything involved, it would be signing the actual laws and staying out of the way (read not writing stupid executive actions (again, see Keystone and Biden’s rejoining the Paris Accords)
If it’s good while a Republican is President, Republicans take credit, if it’s good while a Democrat is in office Republicans take credit. If it’s bad while a Republican is in office, it’s the Democrat’s fault, if it’s bad while a Democrat is in office it’s the Democrat’s fault. It’s just the way it is with the GOP now the Trump Cult. Thet are akk just like Trump.
The truth is there is little the government can do to stimulate job growth or spur the economy other than spend money to make the economy grow faster, run up deficits to make the economy grow faster, or cut deficits or spending to slow the economy down. Both the President and the Congress have a roll in those decisions.
“For those of you unhip”
The definition of unhip is the picture of Will Folks looking like he’s cosplaying the dumbest guy in Congress, Chip Roy.