Republican senators call for an investigation of the Biden administration for overstating job data

A group of Republican senators is calling for an investigation into how the Department of Labor under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris overstated the number of new jobs created in the last year. The request comes after the Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) released a significant correction to U.S. payroll figures.

Massive jobs revision raises concerns

Last week, the BLS updated its data on the number of jobs created in the past year and found that 818,000 fewer jobs had been created than previously reported. This correction represents a 28% decline in previously announced job growth. In other words, the country's economic situation could be weaker than the White House had initially presented.

After learning of this information, Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), who is leading the investigation into the employment figures, expressed concern about possible intentional manipulation of the data for political advantage. Marshall stated that this type of manipulation would be dishonest and an offense to people facing economic hardship.

"Using taxpayer dollars to mislead the public for political gain is an outrageous betrayal of trust. Manipulating the numbers to spin a false narrative while people are struggling to afford gas and groceries is not only dishonest — it’s insulting," he said.

Request for investigation and deadlines to respond

Marshall, along with Senators Ted Budd(North Carolina), Rick Scott (Florida), Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma) and Marsha Blackburn(Tennessee), asked Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su for a detailed explanation of the revised figures.

In a letter sent to Su, the senators asked for clarification on the number of jobs recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, the breakdown between full-time and part-time jobs, and the number of jobs in the government sector. The senators gave Su until Sept. 9 to respond.

This revision is the largest since 2009 when 824,000 jobs were overcorrected. The BLS now estimates that 2.1 million jobs were added to the economy during the revised period, rather than the 2.9 million previously reported.

"As we approach the presidential election in approximately 70 days, the state of the economy is one of the major issues on [Americans’] minds. There should be no confusion when it comes to evaluating the health of our economy," the senators expressed in their letter.

Trump reacts

Former President Donald Trump also criticized the revised figures, describing them as a "massive scandal." In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused the Biden-Harris administration of fraudulently manipulating labor statistics to hide the true extent of the economic crisis. "New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the administration padded the numbers with an extra 818,000 jobs that do not exist, and never did," Trump wrote. "The real numbers are much worse than that and, if Comrade Kamala gets another four years, millions more jobs will vanish overnight, and inflation will completely destroy our country," he added.