Multiple 2020 Democratic candidates are scrambling to put a negative spin on the state of the economy, with some resorting to incorrect or overblown suggestions that workers have to hold down two or three jobs to merely “survive” in the U.S.
Senator Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and former Representative Beto O’Rourke are the three leading Democrats running for the party’s presidential nomination. They all have claimed in some form that workers are struggling in the economy and has defied odds with a historically low unemployment rate.
“[They say] ‘the economy is great, it is doing great for everybody.’ And then you ask them, well, how is that? Well, they’ll point to the stock market. Well, that’s fine if you own stocks. Then you’ll ask them, what’s your other measure? And they’ll talk about well, the unemployment rate is down. That’s fine,” Harris reportedly said on the campaign trail.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been traveling our country. People are working. They’re working two and three jobs to pay the bills. It’s not working for working people,” she added.
But as the Washington Post’s fact checker notes, Harris’ much-repeated talking point appears not to be backed up by the data as the number of people working two or more jobs is particularly small and is decreasing.
Only 251,000 workers out of a total 156 million people with jobs had two full-time jobs last month. This is a decline of nearly 100,000 such people compared to last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In general, there are 7.8 million people who have more than one job.