Biden's June job report shows one-third of new hires were in government sector

President Joe Biden has repeatedly touted his record on jobs creation in America, but what he hasn't told you is that 70,000 of the 206,000 jobs recently added were government jobs. On Friday, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released its jobs report for the month of June, revealing that although 206,000 new jobs were added, the unemployment rate still sat at 4.1 percent, .5 percent higher than June 2023. A sizable portion of those positions were in the public sector, which does little to improve the overall economic situation for ordinary Americans.

Biden said in a statement that "With today’s report that 206,000 jobs were created last month, a record 15.7 million jobs have been created during my Administration. We have more work to do, but wages are growing faster than prices and more Americans are joining the workforce, with the highest share of working-age Americans in the workforce in over 20 years. That’s real progress for hardworking families who have the dignity and respect that comes with earning a paycheck and putting food on the table."

Among those who criticized the report was former Home Depot CEO an Chrysler chairman Bob Nardelli. He called the findings "deceptively correct," and urged people to look beyond the numbers provided by the Biden administration.
 

"The second-largest employer last year was the government, and they're back on the same track again this year," Nardelli said during an appearance on Fox News' Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street. "There is no GDP generated by government jobs." He noted that the report showed there were 200,000 fewer manufacturing jobs.

Nardelli went on to slam the government for allowing inflation to rise, explaining that like "carbon monoxide," it is "the silent killer" responsible for "creating job problems in the quality of life." He also called out Washington's "reckless spending," claiming that, "it's causing these problems in our economy, it's stressing the fault lines in our economy, and whoever gets in that white House next year is going to be hit with a wrecking ball to try and pull this back."

One of the policies Nardelli took aim at was the recently announced overtime protection extension, which will ensure over 1 million salaried workers making less than the median individual salary per year, or about $43,300 get paid for work they do outside of their scheduled hours. If a worker earns $844 per week they will be eligible for overtime pay. It was criticized as a "one-size-fits-all" approach by industry groups while others said these are rules Congress, not federal agencies, should be making.

"This is not equitable in that if you have a lower skilled job, why are they going to get paid more than someone with higher skills?" Nardelli said. "Because they're both working a couple of hours of overtime? So again, I'm not sure this is equitable, and I'm not sure this is an appropriate way to increase the standard of living for our families today. I think there are other things we should be doing."