Under current labor market conditions, American workers may not be doing as well as the Biden-Harris administration often claims.
The White House is repetition President Joe Biden assured Americans that the U.S. economy remains strong during his term in office. Despite the government's intentions, claimsignificantly lower-than-expected job creation, inflation that often outpaces wage growth, and record immigration are contributing to the depletion of opportunity, researchers explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“I know that somehow this idea that this is a great job market is what the Biden administration keeps saying, 'We're giving the Trump administration a solid job market' — sorry. “No, but I think the Biden administration believes that 'its own data contradicts that narrative,'” E. J. Antoni, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation's Grover M. Herman Center on the Federal Budget, told DCNF. .
Excluding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the unemployment rate declined during most of then-President Donald Trump's term in office, but rose steadily toward the end of Biden's term. There is a check mark pointing upwards.rose from a low of 3.4% in January 2023 to 4.2% in November 2024.
pandemic spread unemployment In early 2020, infections spread across the United States and the unemployment rate in the United States rose. peak It reached its highest point since the Great Depression. In the post-pandemic era, the Biden-Harris administration will was popular Nearly 16 million jobs were added to the U.S. economy, but the gains were not credited to the millions of Americans who returned to positions lost during the pandemic.
Under the first Trump administration, the national unemployment rate was 4.7% It was just 3.5% when he took office in January 2017, and just 3.5% in February 2020, the month before the coronavirus outbreak. Unemployment increases as new coronavirus infection spreads spiked When Biden took office in January 2021, the unemployment rate dropped significantly, reaching 14.8% in April 2020. 6.4% From the previous year's peak.
While the post-pandemic economic recovery is playing a key role in bringing jobs back to the market, it is not the only factor that could distort the latest employment figures. Antoni also suggested that much of the recent labor force growth is due to immigration.
“There are fewer American-born Americans actually working today than before the 2019 pandemic,” Antoni told DCNF. “Therefore, there has been no progress in terms of putting American-born Americans to work. All of the net employment growth has gone to foreign-born workers, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also acknowledges on its website. This is the category that exists. [the] The number of illegal immigrants in this category is unknown. More and more jobs are being filled by foreign-born workers. ”
Foreign-born employment in the United States increased by nearly 15% from the start of Biden's term through July 2024. According to In an October report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. One of the biggest changes in employment was seen from November 2023 to November 2024, with foreign-born people gaining around 400,000 jobs year-on-year, while locally-born jobs disappeared and American employment fell by more than 1 million people from the previous year.
“Given the significant increase in the number of illegal aliens under the Biden administration, we can only assume that a disproportionate number of foreign workers include illegal aliens,” Antoni told DCNF. ” he said.
Foreign-born workers, as defined by the BLS, are: include Includes immigrants, refugees, and temporary students and workers who reside in the United States legally and illegally. BLS admitted A November news release announced that both the employment and unemployment surveys include “at least some” illegal immigrants.
“If I had to create a word to describe it, [the labor market]Then it would be 'America's last country,''' Antoni added.
The Biden-Harris administration oversaw the largest wave of net immigration in U.S. history, much of it fueled by illegal immigration. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States will increase to 11 million by 2022. According to Pew Research Center estimates that 8.3 million illegal immigrants work in the United States, making up about 5.2% of the workforce. According to Estimates from the New York Center for Immigration Studies. (Related: Biden paid $80 billion for IRS enforcement; Congress has already canceled half of it.)
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“What we've seen with the massive influx of illegal immigrants into this country is lower wages for low-skilled workers,” Antoni told DCNF. “When Americans enter the workforce for the first time, their jobs are almost always filled by low-skilled workers. The de facto act of driving down these wages greatly disincentivizes Americans from getting their first job.” and devalues the first rung of the average American's ladder of success.”
Biden has repeatedly defended the influx of foreign-born workers, arguing that immigrants “contribute to economic growth and job creation.” This rhetoric is consistent with the administration's optimism about the broader economy, but Antoni said that despite “very positive headlines,” the job market is “more positive than we've been led to believe.” “It's much more anemic.”
For example, if the government praised Although 227,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in November, BLS data shows that 28,000 private sector jobs were lost in the same month. At the same time, the federal government continued to expand its payroll, adding 33,000 jobs in November. According to To BLS.
Employment figures released just before the election showed that nonfarm payrolls rose by just 12,000 jobs, nearly 100,000 fewer than economists expected. prediction It is said that 110,000 new jobs will be created.
Republican Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said: statement On November 1, in response to the October 2024 BLS jobs report, it denounced it as “further evidence of the astonishing incompetence” of the Biden-Harris administration.
“When you look inside the Biden-Harris job market, the facts show that blue-collar workers continue to struggle, that the bureaucracy is booming, and that the paychecks can no longer be paid,” Smith said. said in a statement.
The Biden-Harris administration repeatedly overestimated the number of U.S. payrolls. BLS Estimation In August, it was announced that U.S. payrolls from April 2023 to March 2024 would likely be revised downward by 818,000 jobs, an average of about 68,000 jobs have been lost. This is the largest downward revision to payroll data since 2009, Bloomberg reported. reported. The failure of the BLS's overly optimistic job growth expectations to materialize has heightened concerns about a possible economic slowdown.
Republican Texas Rep. Jody Arrington, chair of the House Budget Committee, said: statement In August, he criticized the downward revision of the jobs report as an indicator that the economy was weaker than previously thought.
“The economy is a key issue in this presidential election, and given the recent downwardly revised jobs report and persistently high prices and interest rates, we expect the Biden-Harris economy to be much weaker than we believed. Arrington said in a statement.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen previously explained Inflation is also “temporary” claimed In April 2024, it announced that “real wages and median household wealth are higher than they were before the pandemic.” But for almost two years, inflation has outpaced most workers' wages. meanwhile Real wages in the U.S. also fell from November 2020 to September 2024, according to data compiled by . Statista.
Heading into the 2024 presidential election, four in 10 voters believe the economy is the most pressing issue facing the country. According to More than 110,000 voters responded to the AP VoteCast survey. 54% of Americans say that to make ends meet, side job or side job According to MarketWatch, to “supplement primary income” investigation Published in August.
Ahead of Trump's return to the White House, ResumeGenius reported that nearly two-thirds of American workers said they were optimistic about the impact the incoming Trump administration would have on their careers. investigation Found it.
Americans have endured years of inflation and soaring prices under the Biden-Harris administration. Inflation has slowed since peaking at about 9.1% in June 2022, but interest rates remain above the Fed's rate. Target range Prices of daily necessities continued to rise, rising 2%. rise In November.
“It looks like workers aren't making more money, there's slightly less employment than before, and prices are much higher than they were before,” said Sean Higgins, a researcher at the Institute for Competitive Enterprise. he told DCNF. “It's not surprising that people were in a strange mood and didn't think very well of what happened. [Biden-Harris] The administration's insistence that everything was good. ”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
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