As the media campaign so vigorously for Democrats and cheer how great the Biden-Harris policies have been, suddenly, the Department of Labor comes out with an unemployment report that blows away expectations. 

Biden and Harris were out bragging as a significant number of people still can’t pay their bills without running up new debt or going delinquent on the debt they already had. 

Supposedly, 254,000 jobs were created in September.  Isn’t that amazing, that this report came out one month before the election? 

Of course, the media gave the headline number and never got into the details.

Here is one important detail: government jobs showed a gain of 785,000 because of the second biggest seasonal adjustment on record.  (It is easy to manipulate numbers when you have “seasonal adjustments.”)  This would mean that private-sector employment declined 531,000 with seasonal adjustments.  I would say that is not too much to brag about.  Somehow, the voters don’t get to see that number, but they know that the economy has sucked the past four years because they can’t pay their bills. 

In September, the number of government workers as tracked by the Household Survey soared by 785K, from 21.421 million to 22.216 million, both seasonally adjusted (source: Table A8 from the jobs report). This was the biggest monthly surge in government workers on record (excluding the outlier print in June 2020 which was a reversal of the record plunge from the Covid collapse months before).

And, from the Department of Labor itself: Private-sector employment, not seasonally adjusted, went down 458,000.  What would the voters think if they saw the factual number instead of the seasonally adjusted number? 

And remember: recently, the Department of Labor said it overestimated jobs by 881,000 in a year.  It is sad when so many trust government numbers when they are so consistently wrong. 

Of course, there is no penalty for government employees screwing up so consistently.  They keep their jobs and get raises every year, along with Cadillac health care plans and pensions.  And the public gets screwed.

Whenever Trump or anyone else suggests that government jobs can be reduced, the media and other Democrats have a cow.  They need their votes. 

Image via Pixabay.