Backlash after 818,000 jobs in America ‘vanish’ from jobs report

Donald Trump has called the revised employment figures released on Wednesday a “huge scandal,” after it emerged that the U.S. economy created 818,000 fewer jobs last year than originally reported.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth figures for the 12 months through March were actually 30 percent lower than the original figure of 2.9 million.

The update, based on a more detailed quarterly source, was the biggest downgrade since 2009, which coincided with the global financial crisis.

The figures show that the labor market started to cool earlier than originally thought.

Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of being “caught fraudulently manipulating employment statistics to hide the true extent of the economic ruin they have wrought on America.”

Former President Donald Trump has called the revised jobs numbers released today a “huge scandal” (he was speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina)

On his social media site Truth Social, he claimed that the data shows the government has “padded the numbers with 818,000 extra jobs that do not exist and never existed.”

He added that if Kamala Harris wins the election, “millions of jobs will disappear overnight and inflation will completely destroy our country.”

The former president also repeated his allegations at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

The employment figures are revised every year. These figures are not yet final. They are expected to be published early next year.

Concerns about a slowing labor market prompted a market sell-off earlier this month on fears the U.S. economy is heading for a recession.

US job growth fell far short of expectations in July and the unemployment rate rose to its highest level in nearly three years.

Employers added 114,000 jobs last month, well below the Dow Jones estimate of 185,000.

The unemployment rate also rose slightly to 4.3 percent, the highest level since October 2021.

“When the delays started happening, we knew the numbers weren’t going to be good,” said Rob Wilson, president of Employco USA, an employment solutions company.

“This is a major blunder by the Department of Labor,” said Rob Wilson, president of Employco USA, an employment solutions company.

‘It is particularly scandalous that something like this happens during an election year.

“We will never know to what extent these inaccurate numbers affected the election, but it is deeply troubling to know that inaccurate data influenced Americans’ voting decisions,” he added.

Other economists said the revisions were not a “shock” as some estimates had expected a bigger drop.

Goldman Sachs economists expected job growth this year to be at least 600,000 lower than estimated, and the drop could even be as high as a million.

Before the report, initial figures suggested an average of around 242,000 jobs were added per month in the year to March 2024.

Now the monthly pace is likely to be around 174,000, which is still considered a healthy rate of hiring. Bloomberg reported.

Jerome Powell will take the revised numbers into account when he speaks Friday at the Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Unemployment rose to 4.3 percent in July, the highest level in nearly three years

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates between 5.25 and 5.5 percent at its last meeting

“The revisions are not a surprise given that estimates were for a million fewer jobs,” Robert Frick, chief economics officer at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a note.

“This doesn’t change the idea that we’re still in an expansion, but it does indicate that we should expect monthly job growth to be somewhat more subdued and that there will be additional pressure on the Fed to cut rates.”

Markets rose slightly after the figures were released, as they confirmed forecasts that the Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates next month.

Traders now expect a quarter-percentage point rate cut in September, bringing key lending rates down from a 23-year high where they have been since July 2023.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will include the revised figures in his speech at the annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday.

At its last meeting, the central bank indicated it was focusing more on the labor aspect of its dual mandate, which also includes bringing annual inflation down to the 2 percent target.