Peter Schiff: Jobs Report Filled With False Hope

Last week’s latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) leaves the American economic landscape a battlefield of intense debate. While mainstream analysts and government officials claim the addition of 199,000 new jobs in November — and unemployment falling to 3.7% — as a sign of robust growth, critics like Peter Schiff offer a sharply different interpretation.

The November jobs report has been described as portraying “an economy that is easing toward a soft landing and is not on the brink of a recession,” according to one corporate media analyst. Meanwhile, Schiff, a notable conservative economist and financial advisor, dismissed it as “just another hyped-up jobs report.”

Schiff argues that the positive reception of the report is part of a “Goldilocks” narrative, claiming that the numbers are “just right” — neither too strong to scare the Federal Reserve into hiking rates nor too weak to raise recession worries. He likens this to the Three Bears fairytale, warning, “Wall Street likes to pretend that everything is Goldilocks, but they forget how the story ends when the bears come back.”

Schiff’s largest point of criticism of the government’s numbers centers on the authenticity of the job creation statistics. He questions the actual growth in the economy, if any, noting that about 24% of the jobs touted by the report were auto workers and motion picture workers returning to work after lengthy strikes.

“Were these jobs really created? No. The jobs were there. It’s just that the people who had the jobs were on the picket lines instead of the production lines or whatever they’re doing in motion pictures,” Schiff points out.

Schiff also points out the industrial sectors where the newly reported jobs were added. Approximately 82% of the job gains were in the healthcare and government sectors. Schiff is particularly critical of whether government jobs actually lead to economic growth and more consumer goods that people need. “We don’t want government jobs! These are not productive jobs,” he said.

Schiff goes on to hammer the corporate media and government for pushing a misleading narrative about the job market — describing the establishment’s pre-election year hype as “a bunch of propaganda.” He argues that focusing on a misleading jobs report obscures the broader economic issues afflicting the nation. “None of these numbers are going to matter when we have a huge crisis and all of a sudden it hits the fan,” he said.

Meanwhile, corporate media analysts like Daniel Zhao, lead economist at job ratings site Glassdoor, view the report as proof of a resilient job market. He claims, “The job market continues to be resilient after a year of dodging recession fears.”

The contrasting takes on the government’s jobs report highlight the complexity and ambiguity of interpreting economic indicators.