Steve Forbes, chairman of Forbes Media, and Andy Puzder, former CEO of CKE Restaurants, discuss the December jobs report and point out inconsistencies in its reporting.
Something is wrong with previous US jobs reports.
The government has quietly cut 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at Bureau of Labor Statistics figures shows.
This means the initial job results increased by 439,000 jobs and the labor market is not as healthy as the government claims.
Since the government subsequently eliminated 439,000 jobs, the total share of jobs created by the government last year is even higher. Increased government hiring has driven up the number of jobs.
In-demand jobs with skyrocketing wages that will remain hot in 2024
This is important because U.S. jobs reports influence markets and U.S. Treasury yields. In addition, they are an important factor in the Federal Reserve's decisions about how to raise and lower interest rates. All of this impacts the wallets of US consumers.
A construction worker helps build a residential building in Miami, Florida, on January 5, 2024. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images / Getty Images)
“It’s time to stop trading payroll data,” tweeted David Rosenberg, founder of Rosenberg Research Associates. By his calculations, the downward revisions amounted to an “epic 443,000,” adding that “more than 40% of wage growth in 2023” was due to “the fairytale 'birth-death' model” that the BLS used to “estimate” used. his job reports.
The government sector continued to rank at the top in job creation in December. 52,000 jobs were created in the last month of 2023. As Edward Lawrence of FOX Business points out, this puts the three-month average of jobs created by the public sector at 50,000 per month. Lawrence says acting Labor Secretary Julie Su “didn't want to answer whether that was tenable when I pressed her.”
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The health and social assistance sector, which relies heavily on money from government spending, created around 59,000 jobs.
The problem of excessive employment figures is not new.
In August 2023, the BLS released a preliminary revision for the 12 months ending March 2023 showing that U.S. employment growth for that period was overstated by a net 306,000 jobs. That's an average of 25,500 fewer jobs per month during this period.
Private sector job creation also fell by 358,000 during the period, while government payrolls increased by 52,000.
People move a wooden pallet in Manhattan in New York City on January 5, 2024. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Getty Images)
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank also caused a stir in December 2022 when its algorithms predicted that the BLS had over-reported job growth of 1.1 million in the second quarter of the year.
The president was also accused of relying too much on job numbers. He claimed he created 13 to 14 million jobs. But economists and market analysts have pointed out that these were jobs that the U.S. economy has regained after 22 million jobs were lost due to pandemic shutdowns.
In reality, the economy under President Biden has “added back” all the jobs lost to the pandemic, “creating” 4.86 million jobs since February 2020. That is a modest result.
Additionally, the economy “added back” all of the manufacturing jobs lost due to the pandemic and “created” 201,000 manufacturing jobs. In December 2023, just 6,000 were created.
A man delivers packages in Manhattan in New York City on January 5, 2024. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Manufacturing jobs are very important. They create a halo effect for other industries, be it services or healthcare. The manufacturing sector has been shrinking for 14 months in a row.
Today, labor force participation in the United States is at a historic low of 62.5%.
As Edward Lawrence reports, the December jobs report shows that 683,000 workers dropped out of the workforce. A record 8.69 million people now work multiple jobs to make ends meet. The economy has lost 1.5 million full-time workers while gaining 796,000 part-time workers since June last year.
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That means more workers are holding down multiple jobs to pay for higher living costs, due to a cumulative inflation rate of 17.4% under this White House.
That's not a good sign.