US Government Overreported Yearly Job Gains by 800K

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Aug 21, 2024

Above: An employment sign is seen on the window of a Fedex store on August 02, 2024 in New York City. Image copyright: Michael M. Santiago/Staff/Getty Images News via Getty Imagesstory last updated Aug 22

The Facts

According to a new Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, the US economy produced 818K fewer non-farm jobs from March 2023 to March 2024 than previously reported by the Labor Department. The BLS said this -0.5% year-over-year growth rate revision is more than the typical -0.1%.
The revision, which is the largest since 2009, shows an increase of 2.1M jobs over that period, down from 2.9M previously reported. This brings the average monthly job growth down from over 240K to somewhere between 170K and 180K over that time span.

The Spin

Republican narrative

This proves that Biden and the Democrats have been gaslighting the country for a year. As regular Americans felt the pain of declining wages and increased inflation, Biden unabashedly argued that at least job growth was positive. This also shows that while American citizens were forced into unemployment and excluded from pay raises, illegal immigrants were finding jobs in droves, thus pushing wages down even further.

Democratic narrative

While this report is a bit larger than usual, downward job growth revisions happen every year, including in 2019, when they were revised down by 489K. These latest numbers may have also been affected by the economic impacts of Hurricane Beryl last month in the large state of Texas. This report aside, the goal of labor market cooling to quell inflation is continuing as predicted, with unemployment rising a bit while layoffs remain low.