The Dictatorship
Final jobs report of the Biden era shows strong U.S. growth

Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 155,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in December. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals were far better than that. NBC News reported:
President Joe Biden will end his term with a relatively healthy labor market as the United States added a surprising 256,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. … On their own, the latest figures indicate the U.S. economy has largely achieved the “soft landing” scenario Biden sought: relatively low unemployment and relatively low inflation.
In addition to the very encouraging top-line data, the same Labor Department report showed that wage growth continued to outpace inflation.
As for the political picture, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the U.S. economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.38 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 17 million jobs since January 2021 — nearly triple the combined total of Trump’s first three years. (If we include the fourth year of the Republican’s term, the data looks even worse for him.)
What’s more, while the data from 2024 will still be revised once more, if the final tallies are in line with the available information, the U.S. economy added 2.2 million jobs last year — more than the totals from 2017 and 2019, when Trump falsely claimed that the job market had reached all-time highs.
While we’re at it, let’s also note that over the course of the last 48 months, there were literally zero months in which the U.S. economy lost jobs — the last time job growth turned negative was in December 2020, the last full month of the Trump era — and Biden is leaving the White House with a 4.1% unemployment rate, the lowest for an outgoing president since Bill Clinton, and the second lowest since Lyndon Johnson. (The jobless rate was 3.9% in December 1999. It was 3.5% when LBJ left office.)
The New York Times recently concluded that the job market “is as healthy as it has ever been” — as in, in the history of the United States — even if that’s at odds with public perceptions, even if Biden isn’t getting the credit he deserves, and even if his successor isn’t prepared to admit it.
For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, updated to reflect the latest data revisions:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million
2018: 2.3 million
2019: 1.98 million
2020: -9.3 million
2021: 7.2 million
2022: 4.5 million
2023: 3 million
2024: 2.2 million
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
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The Dictatorship
Pete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse

As last week got underway, it was clear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon was off to an unfortunate start. When the former Fox News host arrived at U.S. European Command headquarters in Germany, for example, he faced heckling and protests from military families.
“Protests by military families against a defense secretary are extremely rare,” NBC News reported.
As it turns out, this was among the best moments for Hegseth during his trip abroad.
The day after facing military families’ derision, the hapless Pentagon chief publicly said it was “unrealistic” to think Russia wouldn’t keep portions of Ukraine it took by force. He added that Ukrainian membership in NATO wouldn’t happen. It was a dramatic misstep: Before negotiations on a possible peace plan even began, Hegseth was already giving Russia what it wanted.
The mistake did not go unnoticed. Not only were U.S. allies taken aback, but Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, chided the defense secretary of making a “rookie mistake.”
Hegseth tried to backpedal a day later, distancing himself from “something that was stated as part of my remarks” — a passive voice phrase for the ages — but around the same time, the Pentagon chief launched into some terribly odd comments about the use of force. “We can talk all we want about values. Values are important,” Hegseth said in widely derided comments. “But you can’t shoot values, you can’t shoot flags, and you can’t shoot strong speeches.”
The unscripted comments appeared to reflect someone who was simply in over his head.
Making matters worse, as my BLN colleague Ja’han Jones noteHegseth apparently thought it’d also be a good idea to bring right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec with him on the overseas trip. Politico reported soon after that the activist “was in the room” when Hegseth “greeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of their private meeting.”
The report added“Posobiec — whose record of far-right activism includes promoting conspiracy theories and associating with white nationalists — has long been a controversial figure, and would have been considered fringe during prior administrations. But now, he’s in position to bear witness to key moments on one of the world’s most consequential issues.”
As the dust settled on the secretary’s trip, The New York Times reported“In all, it was a bruising, 72-hour crash course in the geopolitical realities of a job that critics complain Mr. Hegseth, a 44-year-old former National Guard infantryman and Fox News host, is unqualified to hold.”
It’s important, of course, to hold Hegseth accountable for his own failures, but let’s not forget that Trump bears responsibility for nominating the former television personality; JD Vance bears responsibility for ensuring the secretary’s confirmation; and 50 Senate Republicans bear responsibility overlooking Hegseth’s scandals, inexperience and bizarre ideology.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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