Friday morning the latest U.S. jobs report was issued, indicating that during the month of July, the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs, down from the anticipated — already modest — 100,000 that had been expected.
That wasn’t the only news from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. As is often the case with corporate data, late reporting companies or corporate corrections for May and June revealed that the actual jobs numbers were a quarter million less than was first reported. The net job creation in one of those months was only 14,000 jobs.
This casts a decidedly different view on the nation’s economic health than a few months ago. When combined with the president’s on-again-off-again tariff threats (now apparently on again) it now appears that the biggest companies in America are a tad worried.
Rather than comment on facts like an adult, or at least as the leader of a democracy where truth matters, it appears that President Donald Trump has a solution for the jitters that this has sent the business community into a tizzy on Friday. He immediately fired the labor statistics chief responsible for the report, claiming that the normal monthly jobs report figures were “politically motivated.”
Now, Americans should understand that thousands of companies report labor data monthly, which is fed independently into labor statistics computers by these public and private companies. The numbers are the numbers. These statisticians aren’t political – they are bean counters.
Not only is there no private sector group in that world that can replicate the United States government data, it is considered the world’s economic standard. Go to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and if stats are your thing — you will be enthralled by what you can learn.
Who wouldn’t want the honest economic facts? Authoritarians don’t.
The leaders of democracies invariably want the actual facts; good, bad, or otherwise. You can’t solve, what you won’t accept.
But those who study authoritarians say that dictator wanna-be’s want the numbers to be whatever they say it is. In this type of environment, loyalty is not to facts and truth — it’s about the charisma of the leader.
This raises the specter that America’s recent three-legged “economic stool” (government, hospitality/tourism, and healthcare) may be getting a bit wobblily:
With a federal government ramping up tariffs, slashing jobs, and shifting federal government duties to local governments …
With Colorado’s hospitality/tourism category (as we reported earlier this week) perhaps already pulling back …
That leaves healthcare as what economists say is “the single remaining healthy economic leg”.
Oh, that’s right, there is the all-out rut of Medicare and the financial impacts on rural communities. Should we question the labor statistics that are going to be reported by rural hospitals, or will they be “politically motivated”?
Featured image: A flashback to 2020, when Senator Michael Bennet created this chart to document who had created the most jobs. Based on this chart, the current president appears to have some catching up to do.