The Biden administration overstated job growth in 2023 by nearly half a million positions, according to revisions of employment data for the last 12 months.
Biden touted job growth as his talking point from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The president called 2023 a “great year for American workers”, boasting that “the economy created 2.7 million new jobs in 2023—a year when the unemployment rate was consistently below 4 percent.”
However, the 2.7 million jobs were overstated by an average of around 44,000 per month.
For the ten months in 2023 for which revisions are known, the direction has been the same—down, with the exception of July 2023, (initially reported 187,00, later revised up to 236,000), the Epoch Times reported.
Overall, the downward revisions in 2023 amounted to 443,000.
Overall, the downward revisions in 2023 amounted to 443,000.
“Time to stop trading off the payroll data,” economist David Rosenberg said in a post on X. “The downward revisions totaled an epic 443k.”
As Fox Business reported: The government sector in December ranked high in job creation. It created 52,000 jobs in the final month of 2023. As FOX Business’s Edward Lawrence points out, that brings the three-month average of jobs created by the government sector to 50,000 per month. Lawrence says Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su “would not answer if this is sustainable when I pressed her.”
“Dec.’s number is likely to be revised lower next month,” Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital, said in a post on X, pointing out that ten “of the last 11 jobs reports have been revised sharply lower.
“What are the odds that’s random? Try tossing a coin 11 times and see how often either heads or tails come up 10 times out of 11 tosses?” he asked.
According to BLS, it is normal for there to be revisions in the job growth data because it is based on surveys.
“Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors,” BLS said in a statement.
Other market experts voiced concern that the bulk of the revisions in 2023 were all down.
“Raises a lot of concerns about the accuracy of economic data interpretation. We need transparent data sources,” Ulrik Lykke, co-founder of Peanuds, a fintech firm, said in a post on X.
President of Spectra Markets, Brent Donnelly, said that the downward revisions are a recent phenomenon.
“For all those saying NFP is rigged because it’s always strong, then revised lower. That’s the opposite of what is true,” he wrote in a post on X.
“The downward revisions are a recent thing.”
So Biden was boasting about incorrect job growth data for 2023.
“If you’re puzzled as to how the Biden administration’s economic data can be so rosy while your own financial situation has deteriorated so quickly, you’re not alone,” “E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, said in a recent analysis.
“Part of the explanation for this bizarre divergence lies in the quiet revision process that has consistently downgraded the official data after the initial headline got all the attention,” he continued. “In short, the economy is not as strong as we’ve been led to believe.”
READ: Trump Predicts the Economy Will Crash This Year: ‘It’s Running Off Fumes’
