COMMENTARY: U.S. workers lose ground once again

The monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report should be called the original “fake news.”

Each month, the District of Columbia’s anonymous civil servants grind out much-anticipated jobs data that Wall Street and financial journalists latch onto as the nation’s financial health indicators. Market analysts tout the monthly data to reaffirm their existing economic beliefs, be they good or bad. The first Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Carroll D. Wright, described the agency’s mandate as “the fearless publication of the facts.” Its website claims that “Just the Facts” is a core value. When asked, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” the bureau responds elusively that it sees an 8-ounce glass containing 4 ounces.

Such is the case with the January 2024 report, which announced that the economy added 353,000 jobs.

A few years ago, a critic called the labor report “the big lie” because among its other flaws, the original monthly data was subject to revisions, often significant. These late changes concern Federal Reserve officials. ‘We must make decisions in real time,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Christopher Waller said late last year. “Whatever data is released, that’s the data I have to use. The problem with data is it gets revised.”

Revisions, which can come more than months after initial reports are published, wouldn’t necessarily be so much of an issue if they were relatively small. However, many revisions over the past few years have been game-changers.

January’s report could trigger history’s biggest game-changing revision. Zero Hedge, which lists as one of its manifestos, “to skeptically examine and, where necessary, attack the flaccid institution that financial journalism has become” mocked the January release as a “clown show,” and as the election season heats up, fulfilling its mandate from the White House “to make the economy look double super good-good.” And, speaking of revisions, Zero Hedge noted that in January, the bureau conducted its “annual re-benchmarking and update of seasonal adjustment factors.” The bottom line — what was until December a decline in jobs has now been miraculously transformed into gains.

The glowing report ignored the following layoffs as a total percentage of their workforce: Twitch, 35 percent; Hasbro, 20 percent; Spotify, 17 percent; Levi’s, 15 percent; Xerox, 15 percent; Qualtrics, 14 percent; Wayfair: 13 percent; Duolingo, 10 percent; Washington Post, 10 percent; eBay, 9 percent; Business Insider, 8 percent; PayPal, 7 percent Charles Schwab, 6 percent; UPS, 2 percent; Blackrock, 3 percent; iRobot, 31 percent; Citigroup, 20,000 employees; and Pixar, 1,300 employees. This month, nearly all Sports Illustrated staffers received layoff notices from the Arena Group, devastating the 70-year-old magazine that once set the standard for sports journalism. Most staff received 90-day notices, but many were immediately laid off.

More inconvenient truths Zero Hedge exposed: The bureau reported that in January that the United States had 133.1 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. The totals may sound good but look back one year to find that in February 2023, the United States had 133.2 million full-time jobs, slightly more than the economy did one year later. Predictably, the job growth is in low-paying, part-time jobs, which have increased by 870,000 since February 2023 from 27.02 million to 27.89 million.

The mainstream media, which had 20,000 job losses in 2023 across broadcast, digital and print industries with more recent media layoffs that include CBC, Vice Media and others, mostly ignored the most important fact buried in January’s report — the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560,000 to just 129.8 million. Add to this the December data, and a near-record 1.9 million plunge in native-born workers has occurred in the past two months.

Not only has all job creation in the past four years gone exclusively to foreign-born workers, but since July 2018, there has been zero job-creation for native-born workers.

With the illegal alien invasion poised to continue throughout the remainder of Biden’s first term — 11 months — and legal permanent residents added at 1 million-plus annually, the labor market will expand by about 2 million foreign-born workers each year. The Biden administration has unlawfully given about 1 million aliens parole, an immigration status that includes work permission.

Foreign-born workers displacing Americans is an ongoing and accelerating tragedy that Biden willfully imposed on citizens. Biden’s malfeasance should provide talking points for the White House and congressional candidates who seek to remove office holders who support the status quo.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.