The fledgling Biden administration has already noticed a strange pattern of dissonance between the economic data reported by the government and the president’s characterization of the economy. Encouraging updates from federal agencies are followed by dire proclamations from the Oval Office intended to justify massive federal action. Tuesday brought another grim political message after a positive market reading.
In the morning, the Department of Labor reported that US job vacancies rose to 6.6 million in December. This was not only a slight increase from the historically high value of 6.5 million in November, but also exceeded the previous year’s level during the salad days before Covid.
Recently this column written down that our new President Joe Biden, in the language of the Obama-Biden administration, has received from his predecessor a considerable “legacy” of a recovering economy. Measured by the number of job vacancies for US workers, the last full month of the Trump presidency is the greatest “legacy” a US president has ever passed on to his successor.
The 6.6 million job vacancies in December exceeded President Barack Obama’s number by more than a million last full month in office. And President Biden’s “legacy” from Donald Trump is more than twice that of President George W. Bushbequeathed to Mr obama.
But you would never know if you listened to Mr. Biden in the White House today. Before meeting with company bosses, the president failed to mention the good news his government had reported a few hours earlier. Instead, it offered essentially the same discussion points that it has been using since the shutdowns last spring.
