The jobs are not that far away, by Daily Editorials

The government overreported unemployment last year by 818,000 jobs. This revision comes on top of monthly revisions already made. It's probably not a conspiracy to make Joe Biden and Kamala Harris look good, or they would have waited until after the election to announce the revision, rather than before early voting. But it's troubling that the government data was so badly off, and equally troubling that politicians and the press have joined forces to tell Americans that the public doesn't know what it knows.

Last week, former CNN anchor Don Lemon traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to interview people on the boardwalk about the election. One man said he made more money under Donald Trump. Lemon told the man he was wrong because “the data” showed Americans were better off now. Lemon was behaving like much of the press and so many Democratic politicians.

If you tell the press that you are worse off today than you were four years ago, the press will claim you were tricked into believing lies. But the lie was that the economy and job creation were doing much better than they were. Americans knew it. The experts were wrong, and the press reinforced the groupthink of the expert class. Where once the life experience of an American had to be accurately reported by the press, now when that experience conflicts with the popular narrative, that narrative must triumph over the truth.

The narrative these days advocates whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of office. The narrative is that we as a nation have won the battle against inflation. Never mind that wages are just starting to rise again and prices are still rising, just not as fast. A 3% raise after a 30% raise is not a big victory for working Americans. To the Democratic elite and the press, it is everything.

The pattern is consistent. Americans should not trust their eyes and experiences. They should believe what they are told. Only when everyone collectively sees the same thing at the same time does it become too inconvenient for the press and politicians to continue lying. Everyone seeing Biden on stage at the CNN debate was just too much. He had to be thrown out. But pay no attention to the same people who threw Biden overboard and begged him to replace Harris just a year ago because of her weaknesses as a candidate.

This week, Americans are being told the “mood” has shifted to Harris and Democrats are back. At best, we're back to February's polls, which showed a neck-and-neck race and key swing states leaning Republican. Pay no attention to the fact that Donald Trump has historically done a few percentage points better than him in the polls. Pay no attention to the turn to Harris. Pay no attention to Tim Walz's lies about his family's in vitro fertilization, his military service, the arrest rates in Minneapolis after the 2020 riots, or how long he kept kids out of Minnesota schools. But pay special attention to the fact that JD Vance went to Yale, but not how he got there or where he came from.

The elite and the press are making fun of themselves. The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a data audit every August, checking the previous year's data to make sure the numbers are accurate. Financial institutions have known for some time that after the monthly downward revisions, the numbers are revised significantly downward again. Nevertheless, the government's revision was the largest since 2009.

Reporters who lecture Americans about how good they have it even when they don't think so themselves should perhaps stop and think. Of course they won't. They never do. Meanwhile, Republicans have another issue to bring to the public. The economy is not running at full speed. Fewer jobs have been created than claimed. And Harris' first day on the job was three and a half years ago. The message is important. The “sentiment” may favor Democrats. The data favor Republicans. But Republicans must press their advantage.

Photo credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash