As jobs growth has slowed from 2020 during President Biden’s first six months of economic leadership, the July Jobs Report will contain key signals as to what the second half of the year may hold for jobs, the workforce shortage, and families’ paychecks.

Here are three key numbers to watch in the July Jobs Report coming out on Friday.

1. Is the President closing the Biden jobs deficit?

• President Biden pitched to Congress his $1.9 trillion Covid “stimulus” with job creation estimates based on Moody’s Analytics. Today, based on his numbers, the President has fallen nearly 700,000 jobs short of those projections.
• He needs 1,380,000 jobs to close the jobs gap in July.
• Anything less than 700,000 grows the Biden jobs gap.

2. Are workers coming back? 

• The lack of workers is crushing Main Street businesses, slowing the recovery and driving prices higher. The overall labor force participation rate hasn’t budged under President Biden. If the 61.6 rate doesn’t begin to increase significantly, the U.S. economy will not return to rapid growth and, in the long term, the lack of workers will extend higher inflation.
• The President’s federal unemployment bonus is to blame. Trying to help Main Street businesses survive, 26 state governors answered House Republicans’ call to end the federal bonus and remove this barrier to reconnecting workers with a job.
• According to a new study by the Foundation for Government Accountability, states ending the federal unemployment bonus have fewer people filing for unemployment, and unemployment continues to decline. But these states only represent about 45 percent of the workers in America.
• Through Labor Day, more than half of American workers are in states where they can be paid more to stay home than to go back to work.

3. Are families’ paychecks falling further behind in purchasing power?

• Families are falling behind. For the first six months of the Biden presidency, higher prices have exceeded wage growth every month.
• In fact, prices have been rising twice as fast as wages, effectively shrinking families’ paychecks.
  
• Rising prices are a direct result of President Biden paying workers more to stay home than work, and massive government spending driven by the White House and congressional Democrats.
• The July jobs report will give us the wage growth for the month, and in two weeks we’ll see the inflation number for July.
• Odds are, families may likely have experienced a seventh straight month of rising prices exceeding the growth of paychecks.