The August jobs report was a huge disappointment, representing the worst jobs report since January in terms of new jobs added. While it was expected that the U.S. economy would add 720,000 jobs, only 235,000 ended up being added.
It wasn’t his first jobs report disaster. Back in April Biden presided over the largest jobs report miss since 1998, with the economy only adding 266,000 jobs – 800,000 short of expectations.
Despite the disappointing job growth, it’s occurs as there are literally more job openings than people looking for work.
One culprit economists have cited for this seemingly paradoxical set of facts is federal enhanced unemployment benefits, which Biden had ended and didn’t allow to expire until today. This is supported by the fact that much of the labor shortage is concentrated in the kind of jobs that would pay similar to what state level plus the federal enhanced unemployment of $300 a week would pay someone to not work.
According to CNBC:
Enhanced federal unemployment insurance put in place during the coronavirus pandemic ended this weekend, after nearly a year and a half.
That means some 9 million people will lose all benefits and another 3 million will see weekly checks reduced by $300, according to an estimate by The Century Foundation.
By the end of June twenty-six Republican-led states have decided to do away with the weekly $300 boost. Those states showed immediate improvement in reducing joblessness as a result. As one analysis found in the immediate aftermath of those Republican-led states prematurely ending benefits: “The 26 states that have announced their plan to end participation in the $300 weekly unemployment bonus have seen a 12.7 percent decline on average in initial claims over the past week. Meanwhile, states that have indicated they will continue participating in the unemployment bonus programs have seen an increase in initial claims by an average of 1.6 percent during this same period.”
Time to get back to work.
Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
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