Joe Biden update: Wrong again on jobs

Late last month Vice President Joe "I Still Have My Job, How About You?" Biden was at one of his regular political fundraisers, trying to elect the next John Murtha.

And the Delaware Gaffer stepped into one of the most common political traps. Even after all those years in the Senate waiting for Obama to grow up, Biden made a prediction, against White House advice, he confided.

As The Ticket reported here, while the Democratic president was out playing golf again, JB predicted flat-out that the administration would report a seemingly wide range of monthly job-creation numbers of between 100 and 200,000 for April. Here are Joe's actual words:

We’re going to be creating somewhere between 100 and 200,000 jobs next month, I predict.

Yes, that's a silly statement. Translating the Biden-speak, what he really meant was....

...between 100,000 and 200,000 new jobs. But you'd think if you're the No. 2 guy in the presidential administration gathering and reporting your very own numbers that you could get them right, especially with a sneak peek.

Friday the Labor Department reported creation of 290,000 new U.S. jobs in April. Which means Biden was off by about 42% from his most optimistic prediction and off 90% from his lowest prediction. Other than that, he was dead-on.

This is, of course, good news for 290,000 Americans (presumably legal residents), their families, creditors and means there now are less than 6 million more new jobs to create before we're back to where we used to be well before the 2009 $787 billion Obama stimulus bill that was going to keep unemployment below 8%.

Normally, when bad job numbers come out, a Democratic president is off in Keokuk talking green energy. But President Obama was so happy with today's increase that he stuck around and issued a short-for-him 18-paragraph, on-camera statement of self-congratulation calling it "very encouraging news."

The president spun the jump in the nation's unemployment rate from 9.7% up to 9.9% as good news because, he said, that means more once-hopeless job-seekers are now less hopeless. The actual rate of unemployment, the U-6 rate counting those who've given up, again increased in April, this time two-tenths of a point to 17.1%. (FYI, these kinds of statements make sense in Washington.)

The actual Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers show only 14,000 new jobs created in construction, for instance, while the largest job growth came, of course, in the deficit-ridden category of government -- 66,000. That's almost 100 new government hires every hour all month. A pretty good hiring clip of about one new taxpayer-funded job every 40 seconds.

It was Biden who, understandably, was out of town today, traveling in Europe and preparing to celebrate Ocho de Mayo.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Your job is to click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Follow us @latimestot  Or Like our Facebook page right here.

Photo: Associated Press (file).

Comments

[Steve]

So when you made fun of Bidens prediction of job growth you really didnt mean the number was too high but too low. Amazing.

[JJ Kahala]

I try to avoid the comment threads, but this piece is so egregiously absurd, I couldn't let it pass. I'd say this was self-evident, but since the person who wrote apparently did so without irony, I can't be sure.

This piece seeks to ridicule Biden because he said, off-the-cuff, that he expected between 100,000-200,000 jobs, yet the actual number turned out to be 290,000.

Can someone explain to my why any reasonable person would ever read this person's writing again?

[Matt]

Yeah. This article is bad. Not worth a future read. Sorry.

(AM responds: Once should be enough for ya, Matt. Thanks for reading it in the present though. And coming back to see your comment.)

[An "unreasonable" reader in Texas]

Very nice, "spot on" article...Love how JB tries to stay relevant in the eyes of EVERYONE with his prescient comments about job creation. He's just an amazing guy...
He should have followed it up by saying it was going to be a "big f...ing deal" and then it would have made the news all over.

[MJ]

It is, in fact, a figure of speech to say "from one to two hundred" when one might write "from one- to two-hundred" and meaning "from one-hundred to two-hundred." Similarly, one might say "from one to two hundred thousand," or " from one hundred to two hundred thousand" when one might write, in a more formal manner, "from one-hundred thousand to two-hundred thousand." Verbal use of the English language differs from written usage, and colloquial usage differs from formal usage. This is commonly understood, and, for the more thick-headed, it is examined in the first year, nay, the first semester of the college-level study of communications.

To criticize Biden's verbal, colloquial usage as if it were expressed in a written, formal framework is a quite transparent misrepresentation. To coin a phrase, you misunderestimate the man -- and the public.

[vickie]

Andy, Andy, Andy:

Do you actually believe the insipid drivel you write? You were such a smarty to degrade the Vice President's prediction of more robust job growth, Then when the economy produces even more jobs, you have the gall to sneer.

Is that all you've got little Andy? So pathetic. Even your ilk (arrogant, incompetent, little right-winged ex-Bushbots) should appreciate the steady competent leadership of this President. You Katrina alums wouldn't know effective, competent leadership if it hit your pointy little heads.

Oh well, perhaps you and Brownie can reminisce about the good ol' days of effective disaster management or that stellar handling of the nation's economy on your watch.

How do you ditto heads manage to be so consistently sanctimonious, self-righteous, hypocritical, loud, and WRONG!!! (Blech!)

(AM responds: Hey, good to see you back, Vickie. Couldn't get enough the other day, eh? Appreciate your loyalty. P.S. Never worked for President Bush. So, now you're the one who's wrong. Thanks again for stopping by.)

[AT]

Like JJ below, I rarely contribute to comment threads, but when a writer throwing stones places himself squarely in a glass house, it's just too hard to resist. Andrew, before criticizing Biden for his numerical shortcomings, you better check your own -- what is presumably -- 5th grade math. The figure 290,000 is not 42% off from 200,000. It's 45% more. (For those following along, that's 90,000/200,000.) And 290,000 is not 90% more than 100,000; it's 190% larger. (Again, that's 190,000/100,000.)

So, you write, "But you'd think if you're the No. 2 guy in the presidential administration gathering and reporting your very own numbers that you could get them right." Well, your readers could very well retort, "But you'd think if you're a blogger for the No. 4 newspaper in the nation gathering and reporting on numbers from his very own research that he could get them right."

[Jesus-of-Nevada]

Nice propagandist drivel! Andrew Malcolm is a fool. What part of "wrong again" doesn't he understand. VP Joe Biden was totally correct.

Hey AM, respond to this: As a writer, you should be unemployable.

(AM responds: Ah, but I am not. And it's not a government job either. We appreciate you joining the millions of others reading here and scrolling all the way down and taking all the time to telling everyone how you really, really feel. Thanks again, Jesus.)