Only 49,000 jobs created in January--and 43,000 of those were *government jobs*
One of the sure hallmarks of rapidly failing regimes is always trying to spin bad news so it seems good. It's a play on "Your leaders have generously raised the chocolate ration from 100 grams to 50 grams."
January's job report came out Friday. Unless you're an expert, the numbers won't mean anything to you, so a bit of background first: Between immigration, Americans entering the workforce and companies laying off workers, historically the U.S. economy needs to create about 220,000 new jobs every month to keep unemployment from increasing.
So historically, if the jobs report was at or above 220,000, all should have been well, and vice-versa. Of course a month after the first report, those numbers would be "revised."
But during emperor Obama's reign something...odd... happened: Every single month, whatever the first report of new jobs was, the next month the figure would be revised...downward. So if the economy added, say, 180,000 jobs in a month, the Media would claim that was actually "better than expected." And when the figure was revised a month later, to, say, 140,000, the Media ignored the lower figure.
When Trump was president, the opposite happened: The next month, the figure would always be revised...upward. So if businesses added, say, 250,000 new jobs--a great number--the Media would report that this was "disappointing, as analysts had forecast 260,000." Then a month later, when the figure was revised to 270,000, the Media would ignore the higher figure. Interesting.
Of course with so many businesses shut down--due to lockdowns ordered by Democrat governors wanting to destroy the strong Trump economy--not many jobs are being created. For example, in December the economy actually had a net loss of jobs, initially reported as minus 140,000. But following the example of Obozo's reign, this has now been revised to...oooh, this can't be real: A net loss of 227,000 jobs! Gosh, that's a huge disaster. You don't think it might have had anything to do with the Dems "winning" the White House, do ya?
Nah, no problem, we'll blame the virus.
So now, with all the shutdowns due to lockdowns, instead of the historic average of around 220,000 jobs per month to keep unemployment from rising, the "consensus forecast" of economic experts for January was that the economy would add 163,000 jobs. (Keep that number in mind as we continue.)
But of course we're now under the brilliant leadership of the Democrats, who control both the presidency and both chambers of congress, so we might expect better results than the experts predicted, eh?
Ah, well...the Democrat dream team confounded the experts all right. Yep, the jobs report showed the economy created just 49,000 new jobs in January--less than a third of the "consensus forecast."
If Trump had still been president, this would have made headline news: "HUGE ECONOMIC DISASTER! they would have screamed. But with the Dems in power, the only mention was deep in the business pages. Not a disaster at all, comrade.
But wait, it gets better: When I said "the economy" created 49,000 jobs in January, that wasn't quite true. Actually only 6,000 of those jobs were created by businesses. The rest were...wait for it...government jobs. Meaning it'll cost more to run government. Meaning government will have to borrow even more money than the huge sums now. And that's even before the Dems' proposed $1.9 TRILLION "covid relief bill" (that gives billions to foreign nations). Hmmm...
But strangely, despite the fact that the economy only created one-fourth of the number of jobs the experts predicted--that is, terrible performance--somehow the Labor Department reported that unemployment actually FELL. And not just a tiny bit, either. The official report claims it fell from 6.7% to 6.3%. Historically a month that adds, say, 300,000 jobs drops the unemployment rate by a tenth of a percent, yet this awful performance supposedly dropped the rate by FOUR TIMES that much.
This is a bit mysterious, since as we noted earlier, historically the economy has to create about 220,000 new jobs each month to keep unemployment from rising, and 49,000 is obviously nowhere near that number. So it does seem a bit...odd. But no doubt there's a good explanation.
There always is.
And I can't wait to see the "revised number" a month from now.
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