You probably saw that the Department of Labor’s September jobs report came out last week and that it was, in a word, abysmal. As one CNBC panelist reacted, “Woah … that is real low.”
When President Joe Biden gave a speech addressing the report on Friday, he painted a rosy picture, of course, spinning the numbers into a glowing reflection on his administration. Predictably, corrupt media helped. “I think when you really dig into it, it’s not really as bad as it looked,” chimed in a CNN analyst.
But the fact is, the jobs report was bad. It was just the next dramatic nosedive in the United States’ trajectory into economic collapse.
While Biden touted that the unemployment rate finally fell under 5 percent, the truth is that the drop is a result of able-bodied Americans opting out of the workforce thanks to COVID fears and fat checks from Uncle Sam, not a result of more people filling employment vacancies. For proof, look no further than “HELP WANTED,” “$1,000 SIGNING BONUS,” and “NOW HIRING ALL POSITIONS” signs on nearly every business you pass that still can keep the lights on.
After all, the unemployment rate reflects the percentage of the labor force who are without a job but looking for work. The latest jobs reports showed the labor force participation down to 61.6 percent, nearly two points below where it was in February 2020, shortly before government-mandated lockdowns ravaged the economy. Although the Dow Jones estimated that half a million jobs would be created last month, the actual figure turned out to be a mere 194,000 — a huge drop from the 366,000 jobs reportedly added to the economy in August.
Dispensing with Fake News
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist or policy wonk to explain why the economy is in such dire straits, but there’s some fake news floating around, so it doesn’t hurt to clear things up. For instance, if you believe the president, you might think our economy is in shambles because of all those darn people who oppose medical coercion — you know, the ones with whom the administration’s “patience is wearing thin.”
“The unvaccinated also put our economy at risk because people are reluctant to go out,” Biden said at a Clayco construction site on Thursday. “Even in places where there is no restriction on going to restaurants and gyms and movie theaters, people are not going in anywhere near the numbers because they’re worried they’re going to get sick.”
Surely, the economic plummet has more to do with fewer people going to the movies than with Biden’s massive spending bill that would cost trillions of dollars. Insane prices at the pump are definitely caused by the minority of vaccine-concerned Americans, not skyrocketing inflation. And if you asked Biden, he’d tell you there’s a direct correlation between not getting the jab and a record-high producer price index.
C’mon, man. Anyone with his eyes open knows that isn’t so. Just as Democrats, teachers unions, and corporate media have got to stop blaming coronavirus itself for the consequences of disastrous COVID-19 policies, they also cannot create programs that send the economy headlong into turmoil and then pretend it’s the fault of individuals’ personal medical decisions.
A Clear Path to Economic Disaster
A clear line begins at the policy and rhetorical choices of Anthony Fauci, Democrat leaders such as Biden, and the corrupt media, and ends at our current economic predicament. Let’s rewind.
At the start of pandemic panic, way back in the spring of 2020, Democrat leaders and the so-called experts of the ruling class imposed harsh lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and mandates, that resulted in banning countless Americans from work. After “15 days to flatten the curve,” conservatives called foul on lockdowns as a long-term solution and warned they would lead to economic catastrophe — only to be smeared as selfish grandma-killers.
Then Congress took things one step further and paid people not to work. Under the CARES Act, the original COVID spending bill, the federal government handed out an extra $600 per week — with no eligibility requirements, meaning even millionaires could collect it — to the unemployed. At that amount, the average full-time worker earning $48,000 a year would take home 15 percent more from unemployment than he would from remaining at his full-time job.
Of course, that was when heavy-handed government restrictions were shuttering businesses (many forever) and keeping people out of work. But then things changed. Workplaces started reopening, the unemployment rate dropped from 14.8 percent at its peak in April 2020 to 6.7 percent by the end of 2020, meaning many Americans were getting back to work by the holidays.
Nevertheless, the short-sighted federal government opted to keep doling out unemployment checks. As part of their exorbitant $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending bill, D.C. politicos kept writing $300 checks (which would have remained $600 if Democrats got their way), in taxpayer money on top of state unemployment benefits to Americans who weren’t working.
A $300 federal subsidy added to the average state unemployment check of $330 per week meant Americans could sit home for $630 per week, or more than $32,000 per year — about double the national minimum wage. That’s a deal many people were happy to take.
That’s where all the signing bonuses and “help wanted” signs come in. Once things finally started to reopen, business owners were desperate to crank up their operations and begged employees to return to work and tried to lure the unemployed into joining their teams.
Biden’s to Blame
Instead of partnering with struggling employers in that effort, however, the Biden administration opted for coercion and partisanship and decreed that first for federal employees and then for workplaces with at least 100 employees, the option was to get vaccinated or be fired.
Although that latter mandate is currently just a lousy press release — it doesn’t actually exist with any force of law — it’s dictating to workers around the country. Health-care workers are being fired en masse for not getting the jab. United Airlines is gearing up to fire hundreds of employees as well. And unvaccinated students are getting disenrolled or suspended.
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1446480478240976896
In other words, as industries try to bounce back from government-imposed lockdowns, rebound from government-induced economic hardship, and lure workers back from government-subsidized vacations, politicians are now thinning out their remaining worker pools with needless vaccine mandates — and then blaming the economic fallout not on their own policies but on people who still believe that individuals should choose what medical procedures are done to their bodies.
We’re all old enough to remember the federal government’s many actions that led us straight to this cataclysmic economic failure. It has nothing to do with who does and does not have manufactured COVID immunity — and Joe Biden’s talking points aren’t fooling anybody. Have you seen his latest approval rating?
