A whole lot of people, including economists and other labor experts, questioned the claim as well, especially in light of the fact that one corporation after another has been announcing major layoffs in recent months, especially in the tech sector.
Well, now, a new report from Bloomberg News reveals the truth: The Biden economy is continuing to limp along, affected by still-high inflation that his and fellow Democrats' rampant spending created over the past two years when the supply chain crisis was at its peak, and in fact, lost 2.5 million jobs in January.
The report begins:
Economists are scratching their heads as to whether the US labor market is truly as strong as the latest employment report indicates or if wonky adjustments are getting in the way.
Employers added 517,000 jobs in January — nearly double the prior month’s advance and above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The unemployment rate also unexpectedly retreated to 3.4%, the lowest since 1969, according to Labor Department data released Friday. Forecasters can at least agree on this much: the jobs market has shown few signs of falling victim to the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest-rate hiking campaign in a generation.
But is that even true?
The employment report was further "complicated by the government's annual benchmarking process," along with an update of seasonal factors and population controls that economists said before the report was released that it could be difficult to actually interpret.
“Seasonal adjustment factors appear to have flattered the headline as smaller-than-usual post-holiday layoffs bolstered the payrolls numbers,” Wells Fargo & Co. economists Sarah House and Michael Pugliese said in a note, according to Bloomberg News.
“We suspect members of the FOMC will take January’s blowout employment report with somewhat of a grain of salt,” they added, citing the Federal Open Market Committee that establishes monetary policy.
Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Eliza Winger added: “If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it is too good to be true — the gain is mostly due to seasonal factors and revisions to past data. Still, it can’t be denied that the labor market remains tight. The Fed won’t place too much weight on this headline jobs number when formulating policy."
The outlet added:
The jobs report is composed of two surveys, one of households and the other of businesses. Each were affected by the Labor Department’s yearly fine-tuning process designed to paint a more accurate picture of the job market. The release included an annual update to the population controls used in the household survey, which tracks the unemployment and participation rates, as well as the employment-to-population ratio. The adjustment boosted the estimated population size by nearly 1 million and the civilian labor force by 871,000.
And here's the kicker: "For the establishment survey, the government’s updated seasonal factors may have impacted the headline payrolls figure. On an unadjusted basis, payrolls actually fell by 2.5 million last month."
"The Labor Department also reclassified about 10% of employment into different industries in accordance with an update to the North American Industry Classification System. That resulted in “major revisions” to sectors like retail trade and information, as well as 'minor' ones within industries like manufacturing and financial services, according to the report," Bloomberg News reported.
There is also this: Before the massive pandemic-induced layoffs, the Trump economy had 3.4 percent unemployment, the lowest in decades, and around 2 percent inflation, also very low. Gas prices were about $2.30 a gallon, and companies were expanding, not laying people off.
So much of what this most recent jobs report claims is just pure fiction. Biden's economy is a disaster, and that's evident in the number of people who say they are worse off now than when he took office.
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