The latest jobs report showed that the US added more than 300,000 new jobs in March of 2024 — outpacing economists' projections of 214,000 — with the national unemployment rate at just 3.8%. But Republicans are still trying to capture the economic narrative from President Joe Biden and the Democrats by November.
Politico recently reported that GOP strategists are doubling down on their strategy of painting President Joe Biden as bad on the economy despite the unemployment staying below 4% for 26 straight months and wages increasing by 4.1% over the last three months. Stephen Moore, who is a visiting fellow at the far-right Heritage Foundation (the organization behind the controversial Project 2025 presidential transition plan), said that Republicans aim to capitalize more on voters' sentiment rather than on the actual numbers.
"Every poll for the last two years has shown that people feel worse off. And partly because for most Americans, they are worse off,” Moore said. “So we’re going to continue to blast the Biden economy as not working for middle class Americans.”
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Moore's argument that most Americans are "worse off" is incorrect. Over the past year, the US economy has added more than 2.9 million jobs, and over Biden's presidency, the economy has added more than 15 million jobs. Wage growth is outpacing price growth, particularly among younger workers between the ages of 29 and 38, who have seen their real median wage rise by 12% since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. And the US is outpacing all other G7 countries in its post-pandemic economic recovery.
"The strong March gain in payrolls and low and stable unemployment are evidence that the economy remains rock solid," Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi tweeted. "Most encouraging is that despite the job gains, labor supply is keeping pace, thanks to robust immigration. The tight labor market and wage growth continue to ease."
"Indeed, wage growth is already consistent with current productivity growth and the Fed’s inflation target," he continued, adding that inflation can be expected to continue its trend of cooling off. "The Fed should be cutting rates. But OK, policymakers want proof positive that inflation is headed to target. They should get that in the next month, two or three."
The strategy Moore laid out of exploiting how Americans "feel worse off" despite positive economic reports is what the New York Times referred to as a "Vibecession." That phrasing is a reference to social media users having bad "vibes" about the US economy despite a wealth of data showing otherwise. Those posts typically amplify isolated examples of higher fast food prices and three-digit grocery store receipts for a modest haul of items from a supermarket.
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The "vibecession" may be more of a problem for Biden than the actual economy. Associated Press reporter Chris Rugaber recently tweeted a graph made by Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Ip of voters' feelings about the economy in the seven swing states most likely to decide the election.
In that poll, voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were asked: "Has the US economy, or your state's economy, gotten better or worse in the last two years?" While respondents all viewed the economies in their own respective states as overwhelmingly healthy, a significant share of those polled simultaneously said they felt the US economy was performing far worse.
Economic policy researcher Will Stancil called that poll "insane," tweeting in all caps that the results "CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED AS A CONSEQUENCE OF VOTERS UNDERSTANDING THR[sic] WORLD FROM INSIDE A MEDIA/SOCIAL MEDIA BUBBLE."
"People DO NOT have an intrinsic sense of how the national economy is doing," Stancil wrote. "They just have a set of stories and narratives and ideas and memes and jokes that they patch together into a sense of how the economy is doing. If everyone says 'the economy is bad,' they’ll believe it!"
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