RUTHFULLY YOURS

Shortly after Friday’s anemic jobs report came out, the stock market tumbled, recession fears rose, and the Biden-Harris administration issued another Pollyannish report about how great the economy is doing – this time with bigger and bolder lies.

Not only did just 114,000 jobs get created in July, which was well below economists’ expectations, but the jobless rate went up for the fourth consecutive month to 4.3% as 352,000 joined the unemployment lines. That’s not exactly “Morning in America.”

It gets worse.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also admitted that it had overestimated the job gains in both May and June by a total of 29,000. This continues a nearly unbroken and highly suspicious trend that has resulted in the BLS claiming big job gains each month – which garnered great press for Biden-Harris – then quietly cutting those numbers in subsequent months, often by substantial amounts. So far this year, 279,000 have disappeared.

It also continues the mysterious gap between the number of new payroll jobs reported each month and the number of people who claim to have gained employment in those same months. While 114,000 jobs were created in July, for example, just 67,000 people said they got jobs.

Over the past three years, this gap has widened considerably.

Then there’s the fact that during the alleged Biden-Harris jobs boom, the number of unemployed has climbed 1.3 million since last July.

But what really stood out was the Biden-Harris administration’s statement. We decided to fact-check the claims, something the press studiously refuses to do when it comes to this administration, and here’s what we found:

“Since Vice President Harris and I took office, our economy has created nearly 16 million jobs …” — FALSE

As we have pointed out countless times in this space, Biden-Harris are crediting themselves with “creating” jobs that were simply replacing ones lost during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The right way to compare job gains is to compare the current job market to the previous peak. When you do that, you find that there have only been 6.4 million net new jobs created since Biden-Harris took office, which is nothing to brag about.

And as we have also noted, even that number is a wild exaggeration. See “The Unvarnished Truth About That ‘Blockbuster’ Jobs Report.”

“… average unemployment has been lower than during any administration in 50 years …” — GROSSLY MISLEADING

The official unemployment number can be almost completely unreliable if you fail to consider the fact that it counts only those who are actively looking for jobs as unemployed. If you give up looking entirely, you aren’t considered unemployed by the BLS. Normally, this doesn’t make a huge difference, unless there has been a massive increase in the number of labor dropouts.

And that’s exactly what has happened. Today, there are 5 million more people who are “out of the labor force” than there were just before the COVID lockdowns.

If you adjust for that, the unemployment rate has never been below 4% during Biden-Harris’ entire time in the White House. And today, it would be 5.2%.

“… and incomes have risen faster than prices.” — FALSE

This is just flat-out a lie. So far this year, hourly wages have climbed 1.4%. But the Consumer Price Index has climbed 1.9%. Since Biden-Harris took office, wages increased 16.9%, but that hasn’t been nearly enough to keep up with the 20.1% increase in prices.

“Today’s report shows employment is growing more gradually at a time when inflation has declined significantly.” — MISLEADING

Inflation hasn’t “declined” at all. It is still going up at a faster rate than it had for decades before Biden-Harris took office. It’s just not going up at the 9% peak it hit under Biden-Harris. Prices today are 20% higher than they were when Biden-Harris took office.

“Prices are still too high. We will keep fighting to lower costs by taking on price gouging, capping prescription drug costs, and building more homes.” — MOSTLY FALSE

Other than complaining about “shrinkflation,” the administration hasn’t actually done anything about “price gouging,” for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist. Prices are going up because of Biden-Harrisflation, not because corporations suddenly became greedy.

The claim that Biden-Harris “capped” prescription drug costs is a laugh. The administration managed to empower itself to limit payments on a handful of prescription drugs for Medicare patients. Drug prices for everyone else have been climbing rapidly – prescription drug prices are up 2.5% this year, according to the BLS.

As for “building more homes” – we have no idea where this one came from. The number of new home “starts” was down 11.3% last year compared with 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was lower than the number of new starts in 2006.

“Congressional Republicans are siding with special interests at the expense of the middle class — with more tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations while threatening Social Security and Medicare. While they try to take us back, we will keep fighting for the future.” — MOSTLY FALSE

The idea that Republicans are “siding with special interests” is one of the most shopworn claims made by Democrats, as is the claim that they are “threatening” Social Security and Medicare – both of which have seen their financial outlooks sharply deteriorate under Biden-Harris.

What is true is that Republicans want to “take us back.” They do. So do most of the American people. Because they want to take us back to a time when the economy was booming and people were prospering, just like they were under President Donald Trump.