It’s Friday.
Like yesterday, I’m gonna go slightly off-book…
When Biden Bits was posted for Thursday, President Biden had tweeted 5 times. He added 6 tweets giving him a Thursday Tweeting Total of 11 tweets and 0 retweets. All six focus on the January 6th, 2021 attack on our Capitol.
5 of the 6 tweets come from remarks he gave on Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the attack. The below YouTube is 33 minutes and 5 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: I said it many times and it’s no more true or real than when we think about the events of January 6th: We are in a battle for the soul of America. A battle that, by the grace of God and the goodness and gracious — and greatness of this nation, we will win.
President Biden: So, let’s speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn’t based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse — a pretext — to cover for the truth. He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election. There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.
President Biden: Some have already made the ultimate sacrifice in this sacred effort. Jill and I have mourned police officers in this Capitol Rotunda not once but twice in the wake of January 6th: once to honor Officer Brian Sicknick, who lost his life the day after the attack, and a second time to honor Officer Billy Evans, who lost his life defending this Capitol as well. We think about the others who lost their lives and were injured and everyone living with the trauma of that day — from those defending this Capitol to members of Congress in both parties and their staffs, to reporters, cafeteria workers, custodial workers, and their families. Don’t kid yourself: The pain and scars from that day run deep.
The video clip is 1 minute and 38 seconds long. It’s snips from his remarks with footage from the attack that day. In short; it’s a campaign ad; to be fair it would be a campaign ad I’d use…
President Biden: Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked — simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution — our Constitution — faced the gravest of threats.
President Biden: Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see? Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.
President Biden: And so, at this moment, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.
President Biden: So, let us remember: Together, we’re one nation, under God, indivisible; that today, tomorrow, and forever, at our best, we are the United States of America.
President Biden: Look, folks, now it’s up to all of us — to “We the People” — to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive.
I won’t lie; my first thought upon reading this tweet was…
Maybe it’s my glib sense of humor or maybe it’s cause I had a glass of wine when I started formatting my article last night that caused that song to play on the loop…
I don’t know…
For Friday, January 7th, 2021, President Biden will offer remarks on December’s Jobs Report. After his remarks; he and the First Lady will travel to Colorado. In the evening they will meet with families that were impacted by the Marshall Fire. They will leave Colorado and head to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 199,000 in December, and the unemployment rate declined to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, in manufacturing, in construction, and in transportation and warehousing.
BLS.gov. 01/07/2022.
On page 4 of the report the BLS reports the revisions to past Jobs Report data:
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised up by 102,000, from +546,000 to +648,000, and the change for November was revised up by 39,000, from +210,000 to +249,000. With these revisions, employment in October and November combined is 141,000 higher than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
BLS.gov. 01/07/2022.
The BLS has announced upcoming changes to the Household Survey Data.
On Wednesday I saw people on my Twitter feed posting jobs gained for December 807,000…
Well, cause jobs reports are released on Friday’s; you can well imagine my ‘what the hell is this?’ thoughts. So I did some digging…
On Wednesday the ADP released the “ADP Nation Employment Report” for December stating that private sector employment increased by 807,000 jobs.
I shared the above so I could share this Reuters story published on Wednesday; U.S. private payrolls increased more than expected in December, pointing to underlying labor market strength, but skyrocketing COVID-19 infections could slow momentum in the months ahead.
The ADP data was collected mid-December before events and flights were cancelled due to the spike in Coronavirus cases.
Reuters goes on to say; Private payrolls jumped by 807,000 jobs last month, the most in seven months, after rising by 505,000 in November. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private payrolls would increase by 400,000 jobs.
They do explain that the BLS report is more comprehensive and that the ADP has; a poor record predicting the private payrolls count in the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report because of methodology differences.
Reuters asked Michael Pearce, a senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics in New York about the cancelled flights, events, and some school closures having an impact on the economy, he said; Most of those absentees will still be paid and therefore counted as employed this month. But a significant minority who do not have access to paid sick leave will not, potentially knocking hundreds of thousands off the official non-farm payrolls tally in January.
The BLS has an explainer on how COVID-19 pandemic impacted the employment situation for December 2021.
For my own-self–I decided to take a look backward using the BLS Jobs Report Archive on past December reports:
In December 2019: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 145,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.5 percent…
In December 2018: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 312,000 in December, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.9 percent…
In December 2017: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 148,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent…
I’m not going to post all the reports I looked at and it’s hard to compare straight year for year because of how the economy rolls…
But going back all the way to 2007; I found that jobs gained in December were 167,000. So, this means that generally speaking just based on numbers other than a few blimps, like 2018 when it rose by 312,000 or the terrible December of 2008 were jobs declined by 524,000. December seems to hover somewhere between 145,000 jobs gained and 200,00 jobs gained.
I based my first blush thoughts on the December jobs gained on before pandemic times data.
President Biden has tweeted…
President Biden has not tweet as of 10:22 a.m. D.C., time.
His economy remarks are expected around 10:45 a.m. D.C., time.
Because the President is traveling today’s press briefing will be an Air Force One press gaggle that is schedule for 1:15 p.m. D.C., time. Reminder; the press gaggle is audio only.
This is an Open Thread.
