In a Jan. 7 speech, after a jobs report showed terrible numbers for new jobs for December, the defensive-sounding President said the U.S. has added 6.4 million new jobs over a one-year period. “That's in one year,” he emphasized again.
Critics have pointed out the "new jobs” created over that one year are technically replacement jobs lost from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rachel Greszler, a labor expert at The Heritage Foundation, tells American Family News there are almost 3 million fewer people working today than before the pandemic hit the U.S.
“So we've still got quite a ways to go,” she says.
Regarding the gains in job growth, Greszler allows there has been growth but the bigger struggle is found in employers looking for people willing to wake up everyday and go to a job. That reality is evident, she says, because the ratio of unemployed workers to available jobs has doubled from an average of 0.7 jobs per worker a year ago to 1.6 jobs for every qualified worker today.
“There's a record number of job openings out there,” she says. “And there's so many job openings and so few willing workers that it's really problematic."
The Heritage analyst says she has personally talked to business owners across the country, from restaurants to the hospitality industry, and all are facing the same situation of workers not returning to the job.
This week, the U.S. Labor Dept. reported the number of Americans applying for unemployment jumped to 286,000 in December, the highest level since last October.
