America's Talking - Episode 13: US economy created only a third of expected jobs in August

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

A new federal jobs report released Friday showed that job creation for the month of August fell far short of expectations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed nonfarm jobs increased by 235,000 with unemployment at 5.2%. Dow Jones economic experts expected 720,000 new jobs for the month. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America in Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. I'm John Spittaro, and this is the 35th week of 2021. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the top stories from thecentersquare.com, and later, executive editor of the center square Dan McAulb and DC reporter Casey Harper will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week, including what President Biden had to say after a controversial exit in Afghanistan, the ongoing debate surrounding additional federal unemployment benefits, and the latest unemployment numbers and what they mean for the economy.

Coming up right after this on America and Focus, powered by thecentersquare.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecentersquare.com, the country's fastest growing, non-profit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site. We deliver essential information with a taxpayer sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecentersquare.com. That's thecenter square.com.

Thecenter square.com. Welcome back. Here are the top stories of the past week on the center square.com. A new federal jobs report shows that job creation is falling short of expectations for the month of August. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that non-farm jobs increased by 235,000, far short of the 720,000 new jobs that were expected by experts. Last month's job numbers comes in at less than half the average for the year. So far, the country has created an average of 586,000 jobs per month in 2021. In June, the Consumer Price Index saw its most significant one-month increase since the 2008 financial crisis,

with some goods including gasoline and used vehicles, seeing price jumps of more than 40% in the last 12 months. To read more about this story and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, over to Dan McAelib and Casey Harper. Thank you, John, and welcome to American Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAaleb, executive editor of the Center Square's Newswire Service. Joining me this week and every week is Casey Harper. The Center Square is Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. First, though, let's hear from President Joe Biden in comments he made this week about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airs. lifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. Casey, that was President Biden earlier this week. We're taping this on Friday, September 3rd. Yes, the 20-year warrant is over, but the chaotic way in which we left, the tragic murder last week of 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation and the state of Afghanistan going forward with the fate of the nation's women in particular in peril at the hands of the Taliban

who took control of the country, all are leaving a bitter taste in Americans' mouths. What's your take on President Biden's speech, the way we left, and what's next? So in journalism, you have to focus on the where, what, who, win, why, and how. And so Biden has a problem with regard. And I think he's right in saying

that most Americans supported the what and the what is withdrawing from Afghanistan. He talked about it on the campaign trail. It was not an unpopular position. I do think there is some war fatigue, years is a long time. There has definitely been a desire among Americans to kind of feel like we accomplished this, to have a sense of it was all worth it, the trillions of, you know, dollars, the lives lost that we kind of can put a bow on this. And so I understand that desire among

the American people and among, you know, Democrats to feel like they have a win. Of course, Democrats want to be able to say that they ended the war that no, neither previous Republicans nor Democrats could do. But it's the how is where Biden's running into a lot of trouble. Now, in some ways, there may have been some naivety among us, among American people, maybe amongst the media, that this could be done in a very clean way. But even with that factored in, a lot of people are given Biden criticism because it just seems to them that so many lives lost, one, you know, losing so many soldiers, 13 U.S. service members had to have been avoidable. Another thing was the chaotic way in which people were having to flee the country rapidly.

It seemed many people feel like that could have been avoided. The interesting and working with the Taliban, who, you know, most Americans still remember that the Taliban was enemy number one for so many years of American foreign policy. I mean, people have been hearing that the Taliban is the enemy for, for, for, for, over a decade. And now to hear that we're working with them, that Taliban troops are not allowing America to the perimeter to the Kabul airport. I think that's been really troubling and confusing to people, honestly. And then a couple of other things he's taken fire for, or leaving the equipment behind. The estimates vary. And this is kind of where we take a taxpayer focus is, you know, one Republican on the Republican Study Committee, which does do kind of research on things like

this estimated it was $85 billion in equipment. Other estimates have been lower. But, you know, that's a lot of money. And to have that fall into the hands of some combination of Taliban and ISIS, people were really unhappy to hear that. And how does that, how does that even happen? You know you're evacuating. You claim to have a plan to evacuate. How do you leave billions of dollars at U.S. tax, billions of dollars of equipment, some of the military equipment, some of them firearms and things like that. How do you not plan to evacuate billions of dollars in equipment along with U.S. military members?

It just doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, and that kind of that question, I think that's really the tone of many Americans right now is how could this happen? This seems like, what am I missing? You know, how did we not plan for this? You know, you can say that you did a good thing by leaving after 20 years, but the reverse of that is you had 20 years to prepare to leave. And is this really the best that we could do after all these years? There was no hard date on our withdrawal other than the one we set for

ourselves. And so it feels like shooting yourself in the foot. And yeah, I mean, just be ready for the stories coming out with more and more instances of our footage or video or people killed by U.S. weapons that were left behind. And there are still Americans who have left behind. been reports of the number of Americans. I've heard reports is maybe it's a hundred, maybe it's in the hundreds or even more than a thousand, but what are you hearing about that? You're right. And it's at least 100 in most estimates say, I think it's kind of troubling to people that we don't actually know, especially when the administration claims to have reached out to a certain percentage of them and been in contact and feel good about it. But if you don't even know

how many there are, how can you really know if you've talked to talk to them, right? So this is, this is, I mean, obviously it's tragic for the people of Afghanistan. There's very real consequences. And it's tempting as an analyst, as a journalist, as a journalist to quickly pivot to the political implications for Biden, which are very real, but that can't come across little callous. And so we have to somewhat balance that in the media of, you know, this is tragic. There are people in Afghanistan who are going to die very soon. you know, religious minorities like Christians, they're going to be women. I mean, we've already seen, you know, a comedian was killed by the Taliban as they just

get their crack down on free speech. And so this has very real implications for them, real implications for the taxpayer. And then third, third most important would be Biden's political implications. And that is, this is not, you know, his most recent polling I saw had his approval rating dropped to 43%, which is very, very low for Biden. He's had a pretty high approval rating. As most new presidents do in their first year. Their honeymoon phase.

I think the Biden administration is realizing the honeymoon is over. And a lot of the Democrats in swing districts around the country are worried. Many of them kind of rode some anti-Trump sentiment into office and are really there hanging by thread and I don't think they're in a good position if the election were held today, but we'll see how things change. I think that's, I don't think we're going to talk too much about the Supreme Court abortion decision, but I will just mention it because it is big news. I think just a prediction for me is you'll see Biden try to latch on to this abortion issue because it is popular amongst his base to oppose the Supreme Court ruling. And it's really just a way to take the news

off of several things he's struggling with, first and foremost, Afghanistan, which are all, but also the economy and the pandemic. If he can have the news talking about abortion for the next month, I think that's a win in his mind. Right. In the Supreme Court case you referenced, they took up a Texas law that bans certain abortions after six weeks, I think it is, of pregnancy. So that's not among the topics I want to talk about today, but I do agree politically. speaking, Biden is going to try to distract from the mess that is Afghanistan by picking up talking about issues that are popular with his base, and that would be one of them.

Also in the news this week, Casey, of course, Hurricane Ida has wreaked havoc across the U.S. first making landfall in Louisiana over the weekend on Sunday and making its way up to the northeast, more than a million people with still without power. While this generally isn't necessarily a dissenter square topic, President Biden made maybe a poor choice of wording when he addressed the nation on this topic this week, essentially saying hurricane survivors, quote, won't be left behind. Probably a poor choice of words, given what's,

happened in Afghanistan and Americans have been left behind and allies of the U.S. during the course of the 20 year war there have been left behind. So politically, what's your take on that? Yeah, this is funny. This is kind of reminiscent

of what we would consider a pre-Trump flood or verbal mistake. I mean, Trump kind of changed what it means to have a, to say something that gets you in trouble as a politician. But this is kind of reminiscent of that era beforehand where politicians would make these tactical mistakes. And I think that's what this is. I do think it's indicative of a bigger problem that

Biden is having, which is his messaging, his speeches are at times still incoherent. They're confused. I think he's had trouble. He's had several just PR mistakes that just show, I think he's tired. When he comes out to the podium, he looks tired, his speech is slow, he speaks over himself. When, you know, Peter Ducey from Fox News was really questioning Biden over Afghanistan and one of his press conferences a few days ago, he had he put his head down on his hands, which became kind of a viral photo. But, you know, those are the kind of things that, you know, any press flag communications director will want to avoid. Now presidents aren't always as concerned as, you know, comms professionals about those optics. But when you don't have the discipline as a president to avoid those things, they do start to add up. to project kind of a weakness, especially putting your head and your hands, like, you know, and resting after, in a

press conference, it's about military issues, a time when you're supposed to project strength. You know, I think it's, it's just going to cause, it's continue to cause issues, and I think it's a pattern we're going to continue to see it play out. And it's not, not even a good or bad political statement. It's just going to cause headaches for him. I think it's going to make Democrats more eager to discuss a potential replacement from Biden instead of him running for a second term because of his age. And it's just adding fuel to that fire of the Republican talking point that, you know, about Biden's mental fitness. Right. And that was one of the rare instances when he takes questions. His staff more often than not protects him against media, but essentially not allowing him

to answer questions because of the fear of what he's going to say. Right. And also, as I was to say, He started off the press conference doing something that sparked controversy, which was saying, all right, well, these are the people. I can't remember exactly quote, but he said something. I've been instructed to call on. He holds a piece of paper. He has a list of reporters, which to some people that may not mean a lot, but that's like very unusual. Even if that was kind of discussed behind closed doors, for a president to admit that he had a list of reporters is just not common practice. It shows, you know, usually reporters are trusted to remember or presidents are trusted to call in reporters,

engage with them back and forth in a kind of deft way and to remember their names. And it seems that Biden's own staff doesn't think he's capable of that. And of course, President Trump, who was widely criticized for how he handled things, the tone of his message or whatever, he never held a news conference where he did not, I shouldn't say never, never say never. he rarely held a news conference where he didn't ask and answer or take questions for media, even for media that he considered and that were obviously opposed to him and his policies, but he still took those tough questions and answered them, whereas President Biden is more protected against that.

Anyway, let's move on. Oh, go ahead. Well, I just want to say, another thing that Trump did, which he had many, you know, many controversial things, but he usually project his strength. And sometimes that can be a weakness, but in the case of things like Afghanistan, military operations, I think that's what people do expect from the president.

They want him to act like a commander-in-chief. And so I do think that this is a contrast. Some of the moments, you know, Trump's greatest weakness was also his greatest strength sometimes, which is projecting strength, seeming kind of impermeable to criticism or attack. And when you're the quote-unquote commander-in-chief in a military situation, people are looking for that strong leader.

And so, you know, softer Uncle Joe, who's going to take care of you and not have mean tweets, which is what appealed to a lot of people, you're seeing the other side of that now, which is in a more situation where you're looking for the strong leader, it feels like it's lacking. Just bring her back to the main point, we're certainly rooting for the areas that have been impacted by Hurricane Ida. We hope the federal government does help local and state government. governments, more than 50 people killed in the Northeast. Of course, about a million remain without power, so we're rooting for them in that response. But let's move on to unemployment benefits, the federal supplemental unemployment benefits that have

been in place during the pandemic as government restrictions forced many to lose their jobs of the course of the last year and a half. Those are expiring this weekend. but the President Biden and Congress are looking at ways to extend those. But Republicans this week stepped up and are demanding a federal investigation into unemployment fraud. There have been there are reports of significant amounts of fraud. I've heard anything where I think we've reported anything from $89 billion to $400 billion in payouts and fraud in payouts based on fraud. what's going on with this?

Sure, just to give a little bit of backstory, as you kind of alluded to, because of COVID, Congress passed $300 weekly federal unemployment benefits, which are on top of state unemployment benefits. If you've never been on unemployment, the state handles unemployment benefits as a general rule until recently. And so all this extra money, which is something comes out of the state, you know, there's different ways it's handled at different states. but it's created a lot of opportunity for fraud and waste.

And so stepping back, even a few months ago, the government accountability office released a report in July that found that states and some of the territories overpaid unemployment benefits by $12.9 billion. That doesn't include fraud. That is just pure overpayment government mistakes. And so this program that we're stepping into, the Republicans are calling for investigation of, it's kind of already has a little bit of a history.

So it's important to have that context that we already have on record almost $13 billion in waste without the fraud. Now, a little bit of that was fraud, but by and large it was not. And so I will say this is not just a Republican, you know, concerned. Senate Democrats earlier this year sent a letter basically saying that they were very concerned about a really a coordinated crime effort to drain these funds out. And so you can imagine some more organized crime really setting up a system where you could

just systematically take these funds out. And if it's not a lot of oversight, you know, there may be a government report two years from now that says, oh, money was stolen. But by that time, the guys are long gone. So that's what the Republicans then are coming into stepping into that situation now, where they wrote this letter. They're calling on GAO to investigate. this and they believe and are saying there's even just structural issues that exist within the federal

government within these agencies that make this stuff possible so you know a couple of ways to look at this is you know this is inevitable some people will say this is inevitable you know people are always going to try to steal from the government there's not much you can do about it we'll try to mediate it and then kind of a more ideological right argument would be this shouldn't be a problem in the first place because having so much money coming from such a centralized source, you see the problem with it. It's wasted. It's stolen.

Taxpayers are the losers in this and the federal government, which always grows is the winner. So people don't like to see this. And the last thing I'll say is just it all plays into this conversation about federal unemployment benefits because by the time most of our listeners will hear this, you know, it will probably be on or after Friday or Saturday, September 4th, which is when federal weekly unemployment payments expire. So there's a big debate Congress about re-upping these and the new bills. Are we going to expand them? Are we going to make them permanent? And so when you have all

those wasted fraud, it hurts the argument. And so it could come into play. And of course, most Republican-led states have already ended those federal supplemental benefits saying that it's led to people deciding not to go back to the workforce. And there are millions of jobs available across the country. And businesses, businesses, nonprofits, all kinds of job creators are having a hard time getting people to come back to work. And one of the reasons that's thought to be behind that is because of these extra benefits, that it's just as affordable to stay home for work for many Americans because of state benefits. and these extra federal benefits

than it is to go back to work, so why should I go back to work? So there's been the thought that these federal benefits have been a disincentive for many of the Americans. And that's important to note that that's not just some

conservative think tank kind of argument where people say, oh, this could disincentivize people theoretically because of some economic theory. But we've already seen evidence that suggests this is true.

One, I'll say, is that we've seen more than two dozen states turn away these benefits. And so, you know, you've seen the two dozen states turn away. And since then, joblessness has dropped. Now, it's impossible to draw a completely direct corollary cause and, you know, causation there. But it is very interesting. And the other thing is morning console released a poll a few weeks back. And basically what they found was that 1.8 million Americans said in this surface,

that they had turned down a job offer because they would rather stay on government unemployment, which if you do the math, you know, you get 300 a week for federal government. It's about the same for the state. So that that adds up to $2,400 a month on unemployment if you get the full amount. And then you start factoring in other benefits, whether it be SNAP benefits, you know, it could be if you're getting the child tax credit, you'd be getting, you know, to, you know, or $300 maybe $1 a month per child. So, you know, if you have three or four kids, you'll be getting over over $3 to $4,000

and benefits from the federal government. And so a lot of places in the country where you can live comfortably on that and without working. And that's what Republicans are concerned about. Of course, the Democrat counter to that is it's a pandemic. People are hurting. People don't want to take advantage of the system. They want to just, you know, feed their kids.

And those are the two sides of it. we'll see, but all this is, like I said, going to come into this kind of September, October clash in Congress because they're coming back. The debt ceiling is here. The Democrats are trying to pass several trillion dollars in federal programs, which involve these unemployment benefits, which involves some of the other things we talked about. And I really think we're going to, we're heading for a showdown. Let's stick with jobs, Casey, with the little amount of time we have left. As we said, we're recording this on Friday. Friday, September 3rd. Today, the U.S. Department of Labor issued its new jobs report for August.

The number of jobs created in August were significantly less than what was expected. What can you tell us about this? Yeah, this is really not good news for the economy. The monthly jobs report came out on Friday and found that the U.S. economy was about $500,000 or half a million jobs short of what was predicted. And we saw a similar pattern last month where things fell short of predictions. So I think what way to kind of read between the lines on this is that experts are keep longing for this post-COVID bounce back, where the economy comes roaring back because the lockdowns are over. And so far it just really hasn't materialized the way they predicted. Jobs have been persistently under expectation.

Not literally every week, but if you look at that for the year, things have just really been under what was expected. And inflation has remained really high. So there's a lot of economic markers that show that the economy is not doing as well as experts at hoped. And I think part of that can definitely be attributed to the rise of the Delta variant. I think there is some fear that especially as we come into kind of the quote-unquote flu season, where people just get sick more and fall and winter, it's just proven that things can get really bad.

But I think that the other side of this are some of this federal spending that have really disincentivized a return to normalcy among Americans. Well, and with the unemployment, the federal unemployment benefits supposedly expiring this weekend, you have to wonder, as long as Congress does not extend them through whatever means. You have to wonder how that will impact September's jobs report.

Of course, we won't know until early next month what happens with that. Well, Casey, that's all the time we have. Thank you, as usual. This has been the America in Focus podcast, powered by the Center Square. We'll talk to you next week.