One of the few areas that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been able to crow about since they took office has been employment.  Even as inflation has soared with prices up 20% and real incomes down by $2,100 per family on their watch, hiring has been strong and unemployment low – until recently.

But now we learn that much of this was a statistical illusion. The new re-estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics find that the agency overcounted some 800,000 jobs.  Over the last year, employment was nearly 30% lower than originally announced. Oops.

It gets worse. The original headline numbers released each month have been revised DOWNWARD by another 300,000 in subsequent months. Add it all together and we have 1.1 million fewer Americans working than originally announced.

Either the Labor Department has been manipulating the numbers (which we think is unlikely), or the agency under Biden is incompetent in counting. Either way, there should be an investigation.

Oh and by the way, the new revisions also reveal that the private sector jobs that matter most – business services, construction, manufacturing, finance – were lower than originally announced, while the jobs in government-related activities were revised UPWARD.

More evidence that we keep adding jobs where we don’t want them and shedding jobs where they are most needed.