Trump cries foul as job numbers for 2023 revised down by 818,000
At a speech in Michigan, Trump spoke about crime and the economy
Published: Aug 21, 2024, 12:29 p.m. MDT
By Suzanne Bates
The Department of Labor announced Wednesday it was revising down its initial assessment of how many jobs were added in 2023 by 818,000 jobs. Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump called the changes “fraudulent” while he was speaking at a campaign event in Michigan to talk about crime.
An estimated 2 million jobs were added in the U.S. in 2023, not 2.9 million as initially reported. The numbers won’t be finalized until February, and could be revised again. ... It is normal for the Labor Department to revise its numbers after a fiscal year ends, but 818,000 is a larger drop than is typical. ... “This year’s revision was unusually large,”
The New York Times reported. “Over the previous decade, the annual updates had added or subtracted an average of about 173,000 jobs to each year’s total.”
At his campaign event, Trump spoke about the big drop, accusing the Biden administration of inflating the numbers on purpose. “There has been a report that the job numbers over the last period of time were fraudulent,” he claimed.
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The Wall Street Journal reported, “Investors had already been anticipating a downward adjustment for the period in question. More broadly, many
haven’t quite believed that the labor market was as strong as payroll figures have suggested because other data points. —such as a rising unemployment rate — have told a less rosy story.”
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Even the
Washington Times is correcting him.
Trump says big downward revision in jobs numbers reveals Biden-Harris team hid economic truth
By Seth McLaughlin -
The Washington Times - Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pounced on the news the federal government overstated job creation numbers, blaming the Biden-Harris administration for a “massive scandal” of manipulating data to make their economic policies look good. ... The Department of Labor released revised hiring statistics showing the nation added 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported between early 2023 and early 2024.
“It really isn’t a revision — it is a total lie,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign stop in Asheboro, North Carolina. “There has never been any revision like this.” ... He said President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, got “caught.”
“They wanted it to come out after the election, but somehow it got leaked. The Harris-Biden administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating jobs statutes to hide the true extent of the economic ruin that they have inflicted on America,” Mr. Trump said.
The updated numbers did not come from a leak but from a routine preliminary data revision that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases semiannually. ... However, the report did reflect the biggest downgrade since 2009. It is the latest evidence that the job market is steadily slowing and adds to expectations the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates soon.
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