January BLS: U.S. Workers Lose Ground to Foreign-Born
The monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report could be called the original “fake news.” Such is the case with the January 2024 report which announced that the economy added 353,000 jobs. Each month, the District of Columbia’s anonymous civil servants grind out much-anticipated jobs data that Wall Street and financial journalists latch on to as the nation’s financial health barometer. Market analysts tout the monthly data to reaffirm their existing economic beliefs, be they good or bad. The first BLS Commissioner, Carroll D. Wright, who served from 1885 to 1905, described the Bureau’s mandate as “the fearless publication of the facts.” BLS’ website claims that “Just the Facts” is its core value. When asked, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” BLS responds elusively that it sees an 8-ounce glass containing 4 ounces.
A few years ago, a critic called the BLS report “the big lie” because, among its other flaws, the original monthly data is subject to revisions, often significant. These late changes concern Federal Reserve officials. “We have to make decisions in real time,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Christopher Waller said late last year. “Whatever data is released, that’s the data I must use. The problem with data is it gets revised.” Revisions, which can come more than months after initial reports are published, wouldn’t necessarily be so much of an issue if they were relatively small. However, many revisions over the past few years have been game-changers.
The January BLS report could trigger history’s biggest-ever game-changing revision. Zero Hedge (ZH), whose website lists as one of its manifestos, “to skeptically examine and, where necessary, attack the flaccid institution that financial journalism has become” mocked the January release as a “clown show,” and as the election season heats up, fulfilled its mandate from the White House “to make the economy look double super good-good.” And, referring to revisions, ZH noted that in January BLS conducted its “annual re-benchmarking and update of seasonal adjustment factors.”
The glowing January report ignored the following layoffs as a total percentage of their workforce: Twitch, 35%; iRobot, 31%; Hasbro, 20%; Spotify, 17%; Levi’s, 15%; Xerox, 15%; Qualtrics, 14%; Wayfair: 13%; Duolingo, 10%; Washington Post, 10%; eBay, 9%; Business Insider, 8%; PayPal, 7%; Charles Schwab, 6%; UPS, 2%; Blackrock, 3%. Measured in raw numbers, Citigroup laid off 20,000 employees and Pixar, 1,300 employees. This month, nearly all Sports Illustrated staffers received layoff notices from the Arena Group, devastating the 70-year-old magazine that once set the standard for sports journalism. Most staff received 90-day notices, but many were immediately laid off.
More inconvenient truths ZH exposed: BLS reported that in January 2024, the U.S. had 133.1 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Look back one year to find that in February 2023, the U.S. had 133.2 million full-time jobs, slightly more than the economy did one year later. Predictably, the job growth is in low-paying, part-time jobs, which have increased by 870,000 since February 2023 from 27,020 million to 27,890 million. Finally, the latest divergence between the establishment payrolls and the more accurate household employment survey is stunning. In January, the BLS claimed that the economy added 353,000 payroll workers but the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped again, this time by 31,000 from 161,183 to 161,152.
The mainstream media, which in 2023 had 20,000 job losses across the broadcast, digital and print industries with more recent media layoffs that include CBC, Vice Media and others, mostly ignored the most important fact buried in the January BLS report. The number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560,000 to just 129.8 million. Add this disturbing total to the December data and a near-record 1.9 million plunge in native-born workers has occurred in the past two months. Not only has all job creation in the past four years gone exclusively to foreign-born workers, but since July 2018 there has been zero job creation for native-born workers.
With the illegal alien invasion poised to continue throughout the remainder of Biden’s first term — -eleven more months — -and legal permanent residents added auto-pilot style at one million-plus annually, the labor market will expand by about two million foreign-born workers each year. The Biden administration has unlawfully given about one million aliens parole, an immigration status that includes work permission.
Foreign-born workers displacing Americans, either employed or searching for a job is an ongoing and accelerating tragedy that President Biden willfully forced on employed citizens. Biden’s malfeasance should provide plenty of fodder for November’s GOP office seekers hoping to remove incumbents.
______
Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
