Commentary: Americans don’t care about the jobs report

Joe Biden is taking a victory lap because of a robust top-line jobs report that showed 336,000 jobs added to the economy in September. Assuming those numbers aren’t materially revised (as has happened so often with data under this administration), here’s the fact of the matter: Americans don’t care about the jobs report data. They do care that they are getting crushed financially.

In a different time, one when jobs were scarce, adding jobs would be something to celebrate. And, of course, we don’t want to be cavalier about employment opportunities.

But the reality is that we haven’t had an issue with jobs for quite some time (absent the anomaly of the government shutting down a third of the economy in 2020).

The labor market has been tight. There have been substantially more jobs available than job seekers for quite a while, and frankly, the economy could benefit from more people in the labor force. If people want to work, while they might not secure their first choice of job, there have been plenty of jobs available to them.

What Americans care about always, but today more than ever, is their personal financial situation.

People are struggling financially to keep up with the ongoing impacts of inflation, and that’s likely why the September jobs report included as a large part of the job “gains” an increase of 123,000 people who held multiple jobs. People need to work more today to afford their accustomed standard of living.

The report also showed a large increase in government jobs, and the government, with its enormous debt and deficits, is not exactly what we want driving the economy right now.

Inflation from government and Federal Reserve policies has made the cost of living a substantial burden for middle- and working-class families.

Individuals are saving less — the personal saving rate stands under 4%, lower than historical averages.

Consumer debt is at record levels across the board. As of the end of the second quarter of this year, household debt stood at $17.1 trillion — a record high. This includes records across various categories, including credit card debt, which has passed an all-time high of $1 trillion.

Delinquencies in credit card debt and auto loans have also reached levels that haven’t been seen in more than a decade (3.8% and 3.6%, respectively).

Stimulus has run out, student loan repayments have resumed, and there appears to be no financial turnaround in sight.

So while of course Americans would be worse off if the job market weakens, that’s not the root of the problem.

Politicians, statisticians, economists, and the corporate press want to paint a picture that the economy is on good and solid footing. Because we have been behind with labor force participation and that has caused a tightness that keeps unemployment down and jobs plentiful for the time being, they lean into that as a sign of strength. They try to highlight that the economy is still expanding, never admitting that it is expanding on the backs of middle- and working-class Americans who are going into substantial debt to keep the economy afloat. And they never mention that government spending and deficits are propping up the U.S. gross domestic product at substantial, long-term costs to all of us.

There is nothing “normal” after 15 years of historically accommodative Fed policy, the scope of government spending, shutting the economy down, an anti-fossil fuels energy agenda, and other policies that have set the stage for the current economic backdrop. No rhetoric changes Americans’ current fiscal reality.