On the economy, critics of President Joe Biden contend he has a substance problem. The White House and its allies claim that Biden has a messaging problem. Both are true.
Last Friday, the government published jobs data for May. The left-leaning media touted the report as good news, showing that the economy added 270,000 jobs. In fact, the data was terrible for ordinary Americans. It shows that fewer Americans were working in May than in April, and that those who were employed needed to work more jobs to make ends meet. These are substantive economic problems for Biden.
The celebratory reaction of the White House and the pro-Biden media illustrates the disconnect between the pundits, bureaucrats, and academics on the one hand, and working Americans on the other. Americans don’t particularly like when their leaders celebrate the economic misfortunes of Americans. That is Biden’s messaging problem.
Number of Jobs vs. Number of People Working
There are two different ways to view employment data. The first is to examine how many jobs people are working. The second is to look at how many people have jobs.
Take, for example, an economy that has three people and three jobs. Such an economy could have three people each with one job and no unemployed. Alternatively, such an economy could have one person working three jobs and two people unemployed. The May jobs report shows a trend moving toward the latter scenario instead of the former.
The government tracks and publishes both sets of job data — that’s how we know the May jobs data was really bad. From the pro-Biden media, you hear only about the first set of data, which shows the increase in “all employees” of about 270,000 from April to May.
Even in isolation, the May drop in labor force participation is highly alarming. Poor labor participation has been a hallmark of Bidenomics, along with high inflation, high interest rates, decreased real income, depleted personal saving, and increased consumer debt. Despite three-plus years of Biden’s so-called “recovery,” the United States has not come close to returning to its pre-pandemic level of labor participation.
Moreover, the Trump administration accomplished most of the recovery, adding 1.4 percent back to labor participation in just six months following the Covid pandemic low. Biden has added only 1.0 percent back to labor participation in 41 months. In fact, it’s this low labor participation rate throughout Biden’s term that has kept the unemployment rate artificially low.
Sustained poor labor participation is a ticking economic time bomb. Labor participation establishes the tax base from which federal and state governments secure their operating funds. Labor participation defines the base from which payroll taxes — which support the soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security and Medicare programs — are drawn. Those programs need an ever-increasing working population to survive.
Bad economic news is bad. Celebrating bad economic news is worse. If Biden does not correct both of these problems soon — a seemingly impossible task at this point — voters in November will solve the problems for him.
