Joe Biden boasted in his State of the Union address in March that his administration had created 15 million new jobs since January 2021, but that’s not exactly the case. A closer look at the calculations reveals that not only is this figure highly misleading, but that the majority of new jobs consist of part-time employment, vague self-employment, and civil servant employment. And among mainland-born nationals, the job market is tough. recession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes two types of employment statistics: the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey. The Establishment Survey samples actual employers and shows growth in non-farm payroll jobs (and breakdowns by specific industries). On the other hand, household income and expenditure surveys sample individual households and measure a wide range of census data, including the total number of working-age people. Labor force size, U3 unemployment rate, total number of employed and unemployed people.
Biden’s job creation talking points are the ultimate self-indictment.
To get an accurate picture of U.S. employment, data from both surveys must be combined. Data usually complement each other. However, in recent years, those numbers have diverged. For example, the Establishment Survey shows that around 3 million more people have been employed since January 2021. This may be due in part to the fact that employer-based surveys detect more illegal immigrants than household surveys.
It’s clear that the White House likes to tout establishment survey numbers. In any case, the reality is that Biden has a much worse job creation record than Donald Trump. That’s before we delve into the nature of these new jobs.
It doesn’t even reach 15 million
When the world shut down due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in March 2020, employment plummeted. It took more than a year to recover from lockdown and only returned to parity with pre-COVID-19 norms in February 2020. Therefore, the only fair comparison for Biden is to measure the number of employees now compared to the number of employees then. February 2020.
If you look at it that way, 15 million new jobs will not exist. According to the Business Establishment Survey, only 5.5 million jobs were created between January 2021 and February this year, and just 2.3 million jobs were created according to the Household Survey.
For example, consider the more impressive figure of 5.5 million. Philadelphia Federal Reserve believes it’s overstated.
While the number 5.5 million still seems significant, remember that this country is always growing. Since February 2020, the non-institutional civilian working-age population has increased by 8.1 million people. Therefore, employment growth has not kept pace with population growth, especially as judged by household surveys. This is why the civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 63.3% before the lockdown to 62.5% now. In fact, when we factor in population growth, we see that there are now an additional 729,000 unemployed people.
Put another way, for every 1,000 working-age Americans, 611 were working before the coronavirus, compared to 601 today. Another 5 million people are not in the labor force but are of working age, meaning they have given up on the labor market for one reason or another. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explains that the disappearance of these workers is a result of:excess retirement allowance”
In other words, there are far more unemployed people than before the coronavirus pandemic.
part time and multiple jobs
The current labor market is terrible compared to the same period under the Trump administration. Thirty-seven months into President Trump’s presidency, the Establishment Survey shows that 6.7 million jobs have been created.
But here’s the problem. The population increased by only 5.6 million people. This means that job growth under the Trump administration has exceeded population growth by 20%. Under the Biden administration, population growth outpaced employment growth by 47%, or 252%, according to the Household Survey. Therefore, the job market has gone into recession since COVID-19, due to population growth alone.
becomes terrible.As mentioned before, we Lose full time job. All of the net employment growth is due to part-time employment. A total of 3.4 million part-time jobs have been added since January 2021, and in the past nine months alone he added 1.7 million.
This is not a story of economic growth of go-getters seeking upward mobility. These are people who work second or third jobs just to maintain a basic standard of living. In fact, since Biden took office, the number of people holding multiple jobs has increased by 1.6 million. This is why the Establishment Survey shows greater job creation. The study double-counts the increase in the number of employees with multiple jobs.
Additionally, many of the new jobs will be classified as self-employed. Thanks to changes in tax law, that now includes many Uber or Lyft drivers. Are people starting their own businesses in record numbers? Not much. These are unemployed or underemployed people who have vague jobs, or struggling workers who are forced to take another job because they are stranded.
Meanwhile, full-time employment has fallen by 1.8 million people since June of last year, thanks to endless “revisions” to the employment statistics.
In other words, top-line employment growth is akin to an increase in white blood cell counts in a sick patient: an ominous sign, not a sign of health.
“Growth” due to inflation
Most of the remaining (lethargic) full-time job creation is facilitated by governments themselves.Over the past year, government employment has doubled Private sector job growth. Over the past six employment surveys, government jobs have accounted for 21% to 58% of all jobs created.
It takes no skill or ingenuity to print trillions of dollars and create phantom jobs while leaving consumers to bear the consequences.
Perhaps this is one reason why all job creation is concentrated in just 15% of U.S. counties.
Don’t Americans need to apply?
Perhaps the most shocking data point that shakes up the Biden administration’s entire job growth story is that since October 2019, U.S.-born American workers have actually lost 1.4 million jobs. So where is the job growth? Over the same period, foreign-born workers gained her 3 million jobs.
In fact, since July 2018, there has been no month of net job creation for country-born workers.
This is very likely why the establishment survey detects millions of jobs but the household survey does not. It’s no wonder that many of these jobs are temporary or part-time.
Biden’s job creation talking points are the ultimate self-indictment. Even during periods of officially low unemployment, our economy remains persistently depressed and we are not creating substantial full-time jobs to keep up with our growing population. If this is what a jobs boom looks like, just wait until there’s an official recession.
