Politics
CNN Goes Off Script, Says Biden’s Economic Numbers Are “Depressing” Live On Air
In a rare moment of naked honesty for CNN, Data Reporter Harry Enten visibly stunned host Erica Hill when he told audiences that the economic numbers currently spelling a nightmarish scenario for President Joe Biden are “depressing.”
As reported by The Daily Caller, Enten offered the explanation that the major decline in Americans’ disposable income is the root of our dismal opinion of the although he claims other metrics are tending into the positive.
He told Hill,
“From the first year of a president’s term to now in a term, look at this. We’ve actually had negative growth. We have actually decreased the amount of disposable income we’ve had, 2.7% for the Biden administration. Look at that. The average for the president since JFK, is plus 4.5 percent.”
Enten added, “And even in the last few months, the last six months, the growth that we’ve had — just 0.2 percent. The average six months since 1960 [is] 1.1 percent, so we’re even behind on that metric.”
WATCH:
“That’s kind of depressing,” Hill observed. “It is kind of depressing,” Enten confirmed.
“And the one last thing I’ll note — even wages here [are] not going up. Median wage: minus one [percent] since pre-pandemic, minus one [percent] since Biden’s first year. Since last quarter? Zero percent. Wages have been stagnant for a long time and it’s continuing to be so.”
According to a previous story from Daily Caller, Hill noted during the segment that there have been gains in the U.S. stock market and echoed the claim from the Biden Administration that the U.S. added 200,000 jobs last month and dropped unemployment to 3.7%.
“I mean, if you were to look basically at disposable income, the change in disposable income, that is probably the weakest economic measure there is out there,” Enten said.
However, this fails to acknowledge that according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the labor participation rate continues to languish at historic lows, the lowest point since the 1980’s. The FRBSF wrote, “People in their prime working years, ages 25–54, make up the bulk of the U.S. labor force. However, the fraction of prime-age men not participating in the labor force has risen for decades, from 5.8% in 1976 to 11.4% in 2022. This trend has contributed to slower growth of the U.S. labor force.”
Bidenomics has created 200k new jobs? You don't say…https://t.co/Uuztt8GDtT #FRED @stlouisfed pic.twitter.com/3URwpAq4o7
— MattHolloway🎙 (@Matt_HollowayAZ) December 15, 2023
As noted by the Daily Caller, additional economic indicators demonstrate the bleak outlook the American people are seeing. Prices for food, rent, and transportation remain high, still up 17.2% since Biden took office in 2021 as reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Over the same period, wages have dropped 2.1%.