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U.S. Jobs Report Revised Down by 818,000 as Recession Worries Grow

The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its annual jobs report by a whopping 818,000 jobs. That’s close to 1 million jobs “created” during the Biden-Harris administration that never existed.

And it’s the largest downward jobs report revision in 15 years–that was in 2009, when the country was in the midst of the Great Recession. Pennsylvannia’s revision for March 2024 was minus 1,600, or less than -0.05 percent, according to the state Department of Labor & Industry.

The news from the BLS sparked an immediate backlash from Biden critics.

“Bob Casey lied again,” Republican Dave McCormick–a former hedge fund CEO who is running against longtime Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey–posted on X.

In April, Casey had posted to X, “We’ve seen continuous growth over the last 39 months. Democrats have built a strong economy, and we did it by putting the middle class over the ultra-rich and big corporations.”

The revision means there were 68,000 fewer jobs per month than originally claimed. Neither the Harris nor Casey campaigns responded to requests for comment.

The Trump campaign was quick to pounce.

“It’s not a ‘revision,’ it’s another Harris-Biden lie being exposed,” said Trump spokesman Kush Desai. “Two-thirds of the jobs Harris-Biden claim to have “created” are actually jobs recovered from the pandemic. In fact, labor force participation was far stronger under President Trump. Americans, grappling with the Harris-Biden economic destruction every single day, see right through Democrats’ lies.”

According to Edward Lawrance of Fox Business, there are 115,000 fewer manufacturing jobs and 45,000 fewer construction jobs.

Lower Makefield marketing guru Tim Daly said the Harris-Biden administration doesn’t “care about Americans. Just control of power.”

“What they did placed our country at egregious risk,” said Daly. “Based on the numbers the Fed [Federal Reserve] should have done a rate cut in March. But because they falsified the numbers, the Fed was paralyzed. And because of their lies, we are now facing a recession. Sadly, the voters will never understand the gravity of what they did.”

Wayne businesswoman Leslie Morgan, a serial entrepreneur who invests in commercial real estate, said she’s been concerned about inflation since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 and signed executive orders ending the Keystone pipeline. Both Daly and Morgan have economics degrees.

While revisions to labor numbers are normal, this one isn’t, she said.

In the last decade, these revisions have been about .1 percent, plus or minus, she said. This revision, “a downward revision of 818,000 jobs, is a negative .5 percent. That’s four times as much on a percentage basis.”

“I have never seen such a high number,” said Morgan. “This is a big deal.”

Morgan, who recently returned from vacationing in the West and Midwest, said people there are already feeling pinched.

“You should see how people are hurting in the drive states,” she said. “Small business owners are shellacked by government regulations.”

And the increase in the price of energy has driven up prices of all sorts of goods, from bread and eggs to gasoline, she noted.

“Oil is the mother’s milk of our economy,” said Morgan. “It goes into every product. And wages are not going up at the same pace as inflation.”

The administration has hurt all Americans, Democrats, Republicans, independents, she said.

“This jobs report is shocking to me,” said Morgan.

However, Morgan believes that if former President Donald Trump is elected, he could right the economy in a few months.

“It’s not rocket science,” she said.

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Is US Economy on the Road to Recession?

When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told reporters last week he wanted to avoid “further cooling” in the labor market, it was taken as a sign that an interest rate cut was on the horizon.

Two days later, the U.S. hit its highest unemployment rate since President Joe Biden’s first year in office. Markets plummeted across the globe on Monday, particularly in Japan where the central bank is considering more interest rate hikes. Markets quickly began to recover, but not before economists and market analysts began throwing around the “R” word.

Recession.

“It’s starting to look like a recession,” Jai Kedia, a research fellow with the Cato Institute, told InsideSources.

“Right now the data I’m seeing points to a recession either has begun in July or it’s beginning this month of August,” Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni told WPHT radio’s Matt Rooney on Sunday. “So my guess is, when they finally backdate the recession, that’s when they’ll say it started.”

The economy added 114,00 jobs last month. But unemployment was 4.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). An estimated 7.2 million Americans are unemployed, up from 5.9 million this time last year.

The manufacturing industry contracted for the fourth month in a row, according to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) a nonprofit that tracks business purchasing data. As a result, the sector has seen job losses in 20 of the last 21 months. That led manufacturers to slow production last month due to decreased demand.

The Fed has been trying to avoid a so-called hard landing for the economy since inflation spiked to nine percent in June 2022. A so-called soft landing is when interest rates rise but there’s no unemployment spike.

Congressional Republicans blame Bidenomics for the economic turmoil.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said the Biden-Harris administration’s increased government spending has caused many companies to replace full-time jobs with part-time jobs. Federal spending surged to more than $25 trillion during Biden’s presidency. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit of $1.9 trillion this year. The national debt passed $35 trillion last month.

Another troublesome factor is the recession indicator developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator suggests a recession starts when the average unemployment over the previous three months hits .50 percent compared to the average low during the past year.

That means America’s economy is slowing down.

But economists cautioned against a definitive declaration that the U.S. is entering a recession.

Dr. Claudia Sahm, the Brookings Institute economist who created the Sahm rule, suggested the current data is distorted due to the pandemic-created recession of 2020 and increases in immigration. At the same time, Sahm noted “the risks of a recession have risen.”

Even though Kedia was discouraged by the July numbers, he said he thinks it could be a “rebalancing in the macroeconomy” and not the start of a trend. He’d rather wait to see if the poor employment numbers stretch for  several quarters.

Other economists acknowledge the forecast is gloomy.

A group of Goldman Sachs economists said there’s a 25 percent chance of a recession happening in the next 12 months.

“Something needs to change for the labor market to remain relatively healthy, but it’s unclear if that change can come in time,” wrote Nick Bunker the Economic Research Director for North America at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Patrick Horan, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told InsideSources there are warning signs that the “economy is weakening.” He urged the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.

The only question is ‘When?’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed Powell to get started on the interest rate cut as soon as possible.

That’s not likely to happen.

“If the question is, ‘should the Fed consider an intermeeting cut now?’, we think history says, ‘no, not even close,’” wrote Bank of America economist Michael Gapen in a research note after the Monday stock market slide.

Republicans want Powell to delay any interest rate cut until after Election Day. They say any cut now could signal that the Fed wants Democrats to remain in the White House.

That’s also not likely.

More than 80 economists told Reuters last month they expected a rate cut in September. And 70 of those economists suggested the Fed would cut rates twice in 2024 with the second happening in December.

Kedia argued the Fed’s inaction on interest rates could cause the U.S. economy to further contract. And while inflation hasn’t hit the 2 percent level the central bank prefers, he advised the Fed to cut rates now “with the expectation” of inflation eventually hitting the 2 percent mark. That could happen in 2026, at the earliest.

Inflation has remained above the Fed’s 2 percent mark for 39 months.

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