U.S. Senator Roger Marshall is questioning the Biden administration’s reported job creation numbers, suggesting they might be a form of election interference. The Kansas Republican has raised concerns about the consistently inflated job figures released by the Biden-Harris administration, accusing them of manipulating data during an election year. Marshall discussed the issue with Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald on “The Evening Edit” Tuesday, highlighting discrepancies in the reported numbers and how they have appeared to be “way off.”
“You’ve also been lead leading the charge demanding answers on why the government has been revising down out of 14 of the last 20 months the U.S. jobs numbers, that they’ve been inflated and they look better than they may be,” MacDonald said. “What are you finding?” The Kansas Republican responded: “I think this is another example of election interference.”
“There’s consistent bad numbers coming out of Washington D.C. This is one more example why Americans don’t trust the federal government,” he added, contending that “we need to get the Department of Labor in front of us” to explain “why these numbers are so far off. It’s almost statistically impossible to be off by 30 percent. This hasn’t happened in decades. This close to the election, it seems like election interference.”
Marshall was joined by Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL.), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) in a letter to Department of Labor Deputy Secretary Julie Su asking about the “methodology in estimating job numbers.” A press release issued by the senator’s office argues that there is an effort to be “seemingly cooking the books to boost public support for the Biden-Harris Administrations.”
“There were multiple instances over the last year in which news outlets reported that the job market was ‘strong,’ ‘red-hot,’ or ‘sizzling,’ to name a few. News outlets took initial BLS data at face value, concluding that the job market was strong,” the letter stated before pointing out the multiple downward jobs revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) over the last two years. The letter added:
For example, in recent months, the American people have witnessed a monthly 97,000 downward revision for January 2024, a 300,000 total downward revision as part of the BLS’s annual 2023 benchmark review, and, most recently, an 818,000 total downward revision for jobs created in the 12-month period through March 2024.
This revision to the 2024 benchmark review is 28 percent lower than the original BLS estimate of 2.9 million jobs created, the second worst revision in U.S. history, and one of many data points accentuating the harm that Bidenomics has brought to the American people.
“Had news reporters and outlets received the revised job numbers first each month, reporting and public perception of the job market may have changed,” the letter went on, criticizing the Bureau’s “woeful record.”
“Regularly publishing rosy job estimates that do not represent reality is blatantly dishonest and misleads the American people, contributing to the fact that less than 25 percent of Americans trust their government to do what is right most of the time,” the lawmakers noted, pointing to how the economy is one of the major issues Americans are focused on as the November election draws near. “Instead of honestly reporting the record, these preliminary job numbers represent the Administration’s desire to claim economic success when Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities,” the letter added.
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