Has the Biden administration been purposely misleading Americans about the nation's jobs numbers? That's a fair question to ask after the final tally of "revisions" became clear after the New Year.
Per a new report, the total number of jobs overreported clocked in at a whopping 439,000 for the year 2023, and there's more bad news involved.
The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.
That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests.
That's an average of about 40,000 jobs per month being erroneously claimed as "created." A couple of mistakes would be understandable, but this is clearly a systemic issue with how the numbers are gathered, and it cannot be assumed to be accidental at this point.
Entire markets shift based on the jobs numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retirements go up and down, investments rise or fall, and companies sink or swim with the understanding that what is released is accurate. The numbers are not accurate, though, and that could severely complicate matters going forward. Never mind that this is yet another example of the Biden administration appearing to play politics with functions that aren't supposed to be political.
The other bad news is that because reporting on government job growth is more direct, the wiping out of 439,000 jobs from the numbers means a higher percentage of total job growth came from taxpayers shoveling out more cash for overpaid federal positions. Much of the nation's current GDP growth is bolstered by government spending as well.
I don't think anyone with a brain would suggest that's sustainable. You can't tax and spend your way to prosperity because you eventually run out of other peoples' money to pay those salaries, and a jobs market propped up by government work is destined to falter.
Further, as noted in the above report, the labor participation rate is at a record low of 62.5 percent, meaning more and more people are simply not looking for jobs anymore. That helps bolster the unemployment rate because those people are then not considered in the calculations.
The Biden administration has created a room full of smoke and mirrors. Everyone in the real world can look around and see that things largely stagnate. It's only in the bowels of Washington that the economy is supposedly booming. These massive revisions to the jobs numbers are just more evidence of how false that narrative is.