Biden Cooks the Books to Sell Economic Failures as Successes

New data have revealed that the Biden administration has been consistently lying to the American people about the actual number of jobs created each month, shattering the White House’s narrative of a surging economy and casting more serious doubt on the trustworthiness of the administration when it comes to any economic figures.

According to a Fox Business report published on January 6, “The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows. That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests.”

In total, Biden’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was forced to revise its predicted number of new jobs downward in 10 out of the last 11 months – an alarming pattern that provides ample evidence to suggest that the “error” might be more of an intentional ploy to mislead voters than a mere mathematical miscalculation.

Of course, the corporate media dutifully touted the initially strong jobs numbers as proof that “Bidenomics” is working, but subsequently ignored the revised numbers which completely undermine their analysis.

But even the corrected jobs numbers are misleading about the actual strength of the job market.

In December, BLS data shows that the government sector created 52,000 jobs, which, according to Fox Business, “brings the three-month average of jobs created by the government sector to 50,000 per month.” Moreover, the healthcare and social assistance sector, which is highly dependent on federal funds, created approximately 59,000 jobs last month, suggesting that many new jobs were funded directly by the government —a far cry from what Biden repeatedly insists is a “roaring” economy.

Put another way, even as inflation remains stubbornly high, the Biden administration is using your tax dollars to “create” thousands of jobs, again artificially inflating the overall jobs numbers.

Unfortunately, jobs numbers are far from the only economic category the Biden administration has been blatantly dishonest about.

For instance, though Biden and many economists have long resorted to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as the most reliable indicator of inflation, there is ample reason to believe CPI is not a truly representative marker of inflationary forces.

As economists have long noted, the CPI itself is not a measure of inflation, but rather a measure of consumer spending behaviors, which in and of themselves largely fail to accurately measure inflation rates. In fact, the CPI fails to meet the government’s own definition of inflation as defined by BLS, which is “a process of continuously rising prices or equivalently, of a continuously falling value of money.” The CPI, however, does not account for the declining value of money—calling into question its value as a figure relevant to inflation.

Furthermore, though Biden is technically correct that inflation rates have fallen over the last year, the U.S. economy has not experienced any deflation—meaning that prices are still far greater than they were before Biden took office, and will likely only continue to rise.

Yet another one of Biden’s favorite mistruths regarding the state of the economy has been what he calls his administration’s record job creation—claiming he is responsible for the creation of more than 14 million American jobs. He fails to note, however, that in the spring of 2020, the economy lost more than 22 million jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which have since been restored thanks to states reopening their economies.

As economic analysts Justin Haskins and Chris Talgo wrote in in a Fox News piece, “If anything, Biden’s anti-energy policies, tax increases, huge spending bills, and overregulation hindered what could have been an even more vigorous job recovery.”

Biden has also parroted countless other bald-faced lies about cutting the deficit, the state of the economy under the Trump administration, energy prices, family savings, and numerous other economic topics.

The rationale for the Biden administration’s mountain of falsehoods, lies, and exaggerations is resoundingly clear: Joe Biden and his far-left cronies know that he will not win reelection this November if voters know how poor the state of the economy truly is. Biden continues to poll drastically behind Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and other GOP candidates in both national and swing state head-to-head matchups.

Is it any wonder, then, why he has ordered his government to cook the books and lie about anything and everything he can to save face?

But the American people don’t seem to be falling for it. A poll from Quinnipiac University last fall found that 71 percent of Americans believe the economy is either “not so good or poor” despite Biden’s best efforts to dupe them.

Nonetheless, as this fall’s presidential election approaches, Biden and the government agencies he controls will likely continue to attempt to mislead voters in the absence of any real plan for resurrecting the economy.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.