Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came along, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was the heir apparent to the socialist throne, as she’s the only obviously anti-capitalist politician in Congress who isn’t at death’s door. But now that new blood has entered the race to best espouse Communist principles within the structure of American government has arrived, Warren is desperately trying to stay relevant.
Earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez made the bizarre claim that unemployment is at an all-time low because people are working “two jobs,” a statistic she claims inflates employment numbers.
Not to be outdone, Warren claimed Thursday that not only were Americans working two jobs, in many cases, they were actually working four, twice the number Ocasio-Cortez cited.
WATCH: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren claims people are working 4 jobs just to survive.
I suppose she didn’t want to be outdone by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said unemployment is low because people are working 2-3 jobs. https://t.co/MFYLqH2lV7 pic.twitter.com/LK0EgNuHbA
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) July 19, 2018
Both Warren and Ocasio-Cortez are wrong.
More than 148 million Americans of age to work are employed in a single job. Only around 6 or 7 million Americans are holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet. Politifact, hardly a right-wing publication, rated Ocasio-Cortez’s claim “Pants on Fire.”
“[B]y the official statistics, multiple job holders account for a tiny fraction of American workers,” Politifact corrected. “[T]his percentage isn’t high by historical standards.”
The number of Americans holding two or more jobs has actually decreased slightly from the Bill Clinton-era in the mid 1990s, when it hit around 6.5%. The multiple employment rate has its peaks and valleys, but for the last two decades, it’s hovered just around 5%. Most of those people also work one single full-time job and one part-time job, rather than several part-time jobs.