by Matt Margolis
The latest jobs report came out on Friday, and Joe Biden wants you to believe that it was fabulous news.
“This morning’s report confirms that 2023 was a great year for American workers,” he boasted in a statement. And the compliant liberal media certainly took the cue. Total nonfarm payroll employment went up by 216,000 in December, which was higher than expected, and that’s what much of the headlines about the jobs report are focusing on.
But a deep dive into the report gives us a much better picture of what’s happening, and things aren’t as great as Biden and his minions want us to believe. In fact, the data may actually be catastrophically bad.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
For starters, despite the better-than-expected increase in employment, the unemployment rate did not go down; it remained the same at 3.7%. While that is a decent number, unemployment in January 2023 was 3.4%, and December’s unemployment rate is also higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5%.
There was also a 0.3 percentage point decline in both the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, now standing at 62.5% and 60.1%, respectively, which means that the percentage of the nation’s working-age population actually decreased in December — a month normally buoyed by temporary holiday season employment.
As for the hiring that took place, it was mostly concentrated in a few select sectors: government, health care, social assistance, and construction. In fact, government hiring accounted for 24% of nonfarm payroll employment gains in December, while healthcare made up 18%, and social services constituted 10%.
The job market in professional and business services showed minimal change in December, with an increase of only 13,000 positions. Employment in professional, scientific, and technical services continued its upward trajectory, adding 25,000 jobs and averaging 22,000 new jobs per month in 2023, which is significantly lower than the 2022 monthly average gain of 41,000. Employment in temporary help services declined in December, shedding 33,000 jobs, and has lost 346,000 jobs since March of 2022.
Biden has consistently tried to take credit for creating the jobs that came back from the pandemic shutdowns, and by that standard, job growth has actually slowed. Roughly 4.8 million jobs came back in 2022, compared to the 2.7 million calculated for 2023. So by that standard, hiring has slowed significantly. Nonfarm payroll employment is only up 4.9 million over pre-pandemic levels and is still behind where we were trending before the pandemic hit.
Guess what? We still haven’t recovered from the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/2toErJmbQn
— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) January 5, 2024
“Overall, employment in professional and business services changed little in 2023,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employment showed little change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; information; financial activities; and other services.”
And then there’s the fact that the employment gains for October and November were both revised downward in the latest report. “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised down by 45,000, from +150,000 to +105,000, and the change for November was revised down by 26,000, from +199,000 to +173,000. With these revisions, employment in October and November combined is 71,000 lower than previously reported.”
Zero Hedge points out that this trend is deeply concerning because the job gains for 10 of the last 11 months of 2023 have all been revised downward.
bidenomics is not working.
People are so willing to live by sucking the government teat that businesses BEG for workers constantly.
CA’s new $20/hour minimum wage for fast food workers is ushering in a bunch of computer and robot workers to replace humans.
And, joe only has a few hours to tout the gov’t numbers because they always get revised down.
01/05/24 – The US labor market just had one of its best years of the decade. 5 charts tell the story.
I guess Yahoo and you missed it.
Record 1.5 Million Crash In Full-Time Jobs, Multiple Jobholders Soar To Record
Bidenomics oh how we knew thee.
Job reports for October and November have been revised down (i.e., made to represent reality, not the inflated figure the Democrats fabricated). The jobs are service related and government jobs. Like draining the SPR to lower energy costs, the regime plays games and pulls tricks to make their jobs figures attractive.
Inside The Catastrophic Jobs Report: Record 1.5 Million Crash In Full-Time Jobs, Multiple Jobholders Soar To Record, Native Born Workers Plunge And Much More
01/06/23 – The US just capped off another banner year of job growth. Now it’s at a turning point –
They do this about every month. Obama did, too. They roll out some imaginary numbers they can brag about then, later when no one is looking, they revise them down to reality. Pity the stupid people who never catch on.
That would be greg. biden has no record to run on. There is no enthusiasm for biden. He will be lucky to get 20-30 million votes.
Ya no de-railment.
And Buttplug is on vacation and can’t be reached.
Now now it’s Pete Bootyjuice have some respect and address him as Biden does.
Bidens Build Back Better was as empty and meaningless as Obama’s Hope & Shange