Things haven’t been going well for Joe Biden. Once touted as a great unifier representing a return to normalcy, he’s now a shell of his former self, and that former self was never anything to write home about. When he’s not blowing up American foreign policy or trying to negate property rights, Biden spends his time ruining the economy and crushing the middle class with inflation.

The latter is the story of today’s jobs report. Economists had estimated adding 735,000 jobs to the lagging economy. The actual number came in at under a third of that.

BREAKING: August nonfarm payrolls increase 235,000 vs. 720,000 estimate https://t.co/iCxoybPYik

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) September 3, 2021

The good news is that doesn’t equal the worst miss in history. Biden already set that record back in May when April’s report was released and showed a miss of around 750,000 jobs. The bad news is that today’s report is still absolutely terrible.

As per our usual arrangement, the Delta variant is being blamed for the sudden drop-off, though, it’s noteworthy that we gained 926,000 jobs last month even as that variant had been raging across the South. Now, we are seeing the same spikes moving further north with subsequent job losses as a result due to how certain states choose to deal with COVID. But given the fact that coronavirus spread is happening regardless, from Florida to Hawaii, it’s another reminder of why it’s economically idiotic to destroy the jobs market in order to receive no real return in the fight against COVID.

The White House owns that failure because they’ve been too cowardly to speak the truth about what mitigation works and what doesn’t, and the results of that are an artificially knee-capped jobs market.

There are other factors at play here as well. Inflation is crushing businesses, especially small businesses, and their ability to hire. When production and service costs rise, there’s less money to bring on new employees. With Democrats trying to shove through another $3.5 trillion in spending in the next few months, even businesses that may have the cash flow to hire are likely taking a wait-and-see approach.

Most of this failure in the jobs market would have been avoidable with even a semblance of leadership emanating from the White House. Instead, Biden has fled to Delaware again while the world burns. Stagflation is here, and like your free-loading cousin who just won’t take a hint, it looks to be settling in for a long stay.