The Biden administration appears to have lied about adding more than a million jobs in the second quarter of this year to mitigate economic data that showed the United States was entering into a recession ahead of the midterm elections.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a report last week shooting down the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) claim that the U.S. added more than a million jobs from March to June of 2022.
According to the Philadelphia Fed’s analysis of the numbers, the U.S. added a mere 10,500 jobs in that time period, as opposed to the 1,121,500 claimed by the BLS.
Now Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is demanding answers from the BLS to explain this gargantuan discrepancy, Fox Business reported.
“For the better part of his presidency, while the American economy has struggled and record inflation has brought historic pain to families and small businesses across the country, President Joe Biden has consistently bragged about job growth,” Scott said in a letter to BLS Commissioner William Beach. Scott pointed out that Biden has used his agency’s inaccurate data to support his economy-crushing agenda and policies.
“Now, thanks to the good work of analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we know that the BLS inaccurately reported the creation more than one million jobs, and that much of what President Biden has claimed credit for as the economic achievements for his administration is a lie,” Scott wrote.
The senator went on to say that the discrepancy “appears to be a massive and incredibly consequential failure that has misled the American people and covered up the damage done to the American economy by President Biden’s radical anti-business, progovernment agenda.”
Scott noted that the White House in April used BLS job statistics “to signal that their ‘plans and policies have produced the strongest job creation economy in modern times.’”
“But this new report shows that to be untrue,” Scott said.
Back in July, the White House was accused of “gaslighting” the American people with “Soviet levels of propaganda” when Biden officials tried to change the definition of recession amid the gloomy economic forecast.
A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2022 shrank at an annual pace of -1.6 percent—far worse than the mild increase analysts had expected. The GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the second quarter, therefore, the U.S. had officially entered into a recession under the traditional definition of recession.
Biden’s economic team explained on White House website that its assessment of the economy was “based on a holistic look at the data,” and cited “one of the strongest labor markets on record” as part of their reasoning that the U.S. was not entering into a recession.
“While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House said on July 21. “Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes.”
The Biden economists said “the 1.1 million jobs created in the second quarter—an average of around 375,000 jobs per month—is more than three times more jobs created than in any three-month period leading up to a recession.”
“Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession,” the White House concluded.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson argued Tuesday night that the Biden administration’s alleged false report helped Democrats keep the Senate in the midterm elections.
“And now we get to learn the truth,” Carlson said during his opening monologue. “The U.S. economy did not add more than a million jobs in the second quarter of this year, instead, the net addition of jobs was about 10,000. So that’s less than 1 percent of the job growth the administration claimed. That’s not a rounding error. That’s not a minor math mistake,” the host added. “This is a lie.”
Scott asked the BLS Commissioner to come to a scheduled meeting prepared with an explanation for why the BLS numbers were “so inaccurate,” and if anyone from the White House or other senior administration officials had spoken to him about the report.
Scott also asked if BLS had made any changes in “how they collected, analyzed, or reported data since Biden took office.”
“It is vital that the greatest economy be driven on data that is reliable and trustworthy,” Scott said. “I will not rest until the American people can be assured that the economic data being reported by the Biden administration is accurate, this issue has been resolved and any person responsible for this egregiously false reporting has been held fully accountable.”
A spokesperson for BLS told Fox Business that the Bureau received Scott’s letter and “is looking forward to meeting with him on Thursday.”