Early Jobs Report Data Previews the Coming Bloodbath

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

The White House has been scurrying to do preemptive damage control in preparation for the coming January 2022 jobs report. As RedState reported on Monday, Jen Psaki gave an incredibly odd and nonsensical commentary during her briefing. In it, she claimed that the jobs numbers were going to be skewed by people calling out sick due to Omicron.

Of course, people taking sick leave from work are not counted as job losses, and the entire thing came across as gaslighting meant to preempt a really terrible report. At the time, I speculated that we’d actually see negative jobs growth.

So what’s this all portend? I think it’s pretty clear that Psaki knows the coming jobs report is going to be in negative territory. That will follow on the heels of a flatlining December report in which the numbers missed by over 50% in a month where seasonal hires should have caused a sharp uptick in employment.

That has now been essentially confirmed via ADP’s latest data. They found that the jobs numbers missed by 500,000, swinging from an expected gain of 200,000 jobs to 300,000 jobs being lost.

To be clear, ADP’s survey is not the same as the BLS survey we will see released on Friday. The results between the two are normally similar, though. At the very least, the fact that ADP is showing a massive job loss figure is highly predictive that the BLS survey will show the same. The exact numbers may differ, but don’t expect the topline results to change.

Besides, would Joe Biden’s handlers be rushing to put out this tweet if doom wasn’t on the horizon?

No one actually believes that spin. The only reason the total number of jobs gained has been so high the last year is that the government arbitrarily crushed the jobs market in the years prior. It’d be like the government blowing up your house, building you one half its size, and then demanding you praise them for it.

Clearly, the economy is faltering when it shouldn’t be, and the administration has no actual answer for its failures. Tweeting through it is not going to be any more persuasive than Psaki’s snark is.

As an aside, can we just note how terrible the “experts” continue to be? How many times can the word “unexpectedly” be used to describe the forecast failures of economists who clearly have no idea what they are doing? Month after month, the jobs numbers have missed the mark, and it’s always described as “unexpected.” At what point does it become expected?

Regardless, the White House is in trouble and they know it. When it comes to a presidential administration, there are points of no return when it comes to public perception. Biden’s woes are really starting to feel baked in and permanent. The arrogant responses coming from his comms shop aren’t helping either. The deficit of leadership is real and harmful.