“Numbers made up”,“Someone's cooking the books” - Reaction to Biden's Economic Numbers
The rosy jobs numbers coming out of the Biden administration have sent many a media outlet to pooh-pooh critics of Bidenomics, but even some mainstream media outlets are beginning to question the numbers they are seeing.
For much of the last month, the U.S. Labor Department has reported that the weekly number of unemployment filings has been 212,000. Exactly 212,000. In fact, only the week of March 30 strayed from this record when the feds reported 222,000 filings.
The Labor Deptartment claimed that this was all great news, because it showed how stable the Biden economy is right now.
A department spokesman said the streak “can be reasonably interpreted as an indication that there has been very little volatility in initial claims over this period relative to historical patterns, and that the seasonal adjustment factors are effectively removing seasonality from the aggregate figures reported by states,” CNBC reported.
But this government reporting has both economists and reporters scratching their heads, the news network added.
Critics of Biden’s numbers find the fact that jobless filings have not fluctuated even a little seems to be a bit on the statistically impossible side.
“How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number,” Bianco Research analyst Jim Bianco asked Thursday on social media platform X.
“Initial claims for unemployment insurance are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file. Weather, seasonality, holidays, and economic vibrations drive the number of people filing claims from week to week,” Bianco continued. “Yet this measure is so stable that it does not vary by even 1,000 applications a week.”
Below is the number of initial filings for unemployment insurance.
How is this statistically possible?
Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number.
Effectively the same number in the last 11 weeks, except for the holiday weeks (President’s Day and Easter).
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Consider… pic.twitter.com/vZbWWC7DRr— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) April 18, 2024
Bianco’s question was echoed by many on his post.
“Numbers made up,” one commenter said.
Another said, “Someone’s cooking the books.”
Others have also questioned the Biden administration’s penchant for playing with the economic numbers in other areas, too.
Last month, for instance, it was noted that 11 out of 13 jobs reports were “revised down” by tens of thousands of jobs after the media touted the initial more rosy numbers.
This is common practice, unfortunately. Job numbers are reported as one thing, but weeks later are quietly “revised downward” from the initial higher numbers.
But the popular X account End Wokeness posted a graph showing just how far the numbers were reduced after the media had finished touting how well Biden was doing on the jobs front.
11 out of the last 13 jobs reports have been revised down from the original headline-generating numbers.
The regime is cooking the books. pic.twitter.com/et1hbGRTkT
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 8, 2024
The media was happy to push out Biden’s great numbers, for sure. But reporting on the downward revisions was of far less interest in most cases.
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