Remember when Donald Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics director because he didn’t like the jobs report for the month of July?
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of the line of fire with the release of the August jobs report today showing a net gain of 22,000 jobs, and the revision of the June numbers showing that the U.S. economy lost 13,000 jobs that month.
“Almost a half a million jobs have been created since the president took office. It’s gonna take some time,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said on Fox Business on Friday morning, thinking she was taking a victory lap, with that “half a million jobs” number, when really, nah.
Joe Biden’s first seven months in the White House, in 2021, saw the economy grow by nearly 5 million jobs – quick math, that’s 10 times more than the “half a million” the Trumpers are claiming.
And he didn’t have a month with a net job loss, like Trump had in June – and as for July, the jobs numbers were revised there as well.
For all the bluster over the previous BLS director fudging the numbers, the new folks in charge only adjusted July by 6,000 in the positive direction.
Six thousand is a rounding error in a labor market with more than 170 million people.
“Today’s jobs report confirms what millions of working families already know: that today’s economy is not working for them,” said Congressman Bobby Scott, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.
The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.2 percent in July to 4.3 percent in August.
Hit hardest: the jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is more than double that, at 10.5 percent, according to today’s BLS report – the highest number since the waning days of the pandemic, and up more than a point and a half since Trump took office in January; and then Black Americans, who have an unemployment rate at 7.5 percent as of the August report, up from 6.1 percent in December, the last full month of the Biden presidency, and 5.3 percent in January 2024.
“Trump inherited the strongest economy in the world. What has he done with it?” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., wrote today on Facebook. “Unemployment is up. Job creation is down. Manufacturing jobs are lost. Trump’s policies are failing.”
What has the attention of our Sixth District MAGA congressman, Ben Cline, today?
“This week on the House floor, I had the privilege of congratulating the Glenvar High School Boys’ Soccer Team for an undefeated 23-0 season. Their months of hard work and determination have truly paid off,” Cline wrote on Facebook on Friday, his lone public message of the day, at this writing.
“Congratulations, Highlanders, you’ve made the Roanoke Valley proud!” Cline wrote.
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Chris Graham
