President Joe Biden made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room on Friday to tout good news about the economy ― and he called out a Republican senator for claiming the numbers are “fake.”
“Anything the MAGA Republicans don’t like, they call fake. Anything,” Biden said. “Job numbers are what the job numbers are. They’re real.”
The national unemployment rate ticked down from 4.2% to 4.1% as the economy added a better-than-expected 254,000 jobs in September, the government reported Friday.
The jobs report is one of the last major pieces of economic data that will come out ahead of next month’s presidential election, and it’s good news for Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. Voters have generally said they think former president Donald Trumpwould be better on the economy, but Harris has narrowed the gap in recent weeks.
Earlier on Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) baselessly complained that the jobs numbers had been made up in order to help Harris win.
“Another fake jobs report from the Biden-Harris government,” the senator said on social media.
As evidence, Rubio noted that “16 of the last 17 reports have been significantly revised downwards after media helps them with their fake headlines.”
It’s true that the numbers get revised, but Rubio hasn’t got a shred of evidence media narratives play a part.
The same agency that produces the initial monthly estimate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, uses additional data to revise that estimate in each of the next two months, plus one annual “benchmark” revision.
The unemployment rate is based on a massive survey of 60,000 households, while the jobs numbers are based on an even bigger survey of more than 100,000 employer payrolls. The surveys are far larger and more detailed than most surveys people see in the news, such as political polls that are typically based on sample sizes of about a thousand respondents.
Rubio’s jobs denialism recalls Donald Trump’s rhetoric ahead of the 2016 election, when he claimed the unemployment rate was as high as 35% when it was under 5%. In recent months, Trump has tended to exaggerate inflation rather than unemployment.
The Florida senator misstated how recent revisions panned out: Only 13 of the last 17 monthly employment situation reports have been revised downwards. The BLS is upfront about how the numbers shift and provides extensive details about its methodology.
Biden touted the most recent revisions, which boosted employment estimates for July and August by 72,000.
“The previous two months were revised up 75,000 jobs,” Biden said, overstating the revision by 3,000 jobs.
And he boasted that the American Rescue Plan and other economic policies have kept unemployment low while still allowing inflation to come down.
“The nation has now created 16 million jobs since I’ve come to office,” Biden said. “We were also told inflation couldn’t come down without massive job losses or sending the economy into an economic recession. Once again, outside experts were wrong.”
