Steve Forbes slams Biden's 'war' on the economy after another disappointing jobs report

Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes tore into what he called President Joe Biden's "war" on the U.S. economy after yet another disappointing jobs report showed slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"What you have is an economy that wants to move ahead but there's still artificial barriers there," Forbes said on Fox News Friday, after the Labor Department reported just 210,000 new jobs for November. Economists had predicted that as many as 550,000 jobs would be created, and the actual numbers fell short of that estimate by more than half.

The editor-in-chief of Forbes business magazine and two-time Republican presidential candidate sounded off against global COVID-19 lockdowns, actions Biden has taken to restrict domestic oil production, and fears over the new Omicron variant in a blistering condemnation of Biden's economic policies.

Partial transcript:

Yes, we know the huge supply change problems, those are underestimated when you shut down a global economy. Not helping that in the future Europe is locking down again. But the fact is that lockdowns don't work. We know medically they don't work, economically they are hugely disruptive. In terms of healthcare they are hugely disruptive.

So In terms of the economy, the administration is still waging war, for example, against the oil and gas industry. They haven't yet explained why getting a barrel of oil from Russia is somehow better for climate change than getting a barrel of oil from America. So they want Russia to produce more and we to produce less. And those kinds of mixed signals are hurting investments in the future. So if they'd just get out of the way, the American people would do it.

One of the amazing things about this jobs report is that they have a thing called the household survey. And the employment numbers there fluctuate widely month-to-month but they do take account of small businesses. Those jobs numbers went up 1.1 million. So you have a lot of small businesses ready to go, but now you have the vaccine mandate in there, which is going to hurt, especially in critical areas.

So the government is the problem. I think people fear what the government is going to do in response to this new variant more than they do the variant itself.

Economists have raised concerns that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 could lead to another economic contraction by slowing hiring, which is what happened after the Delta variant started to spread in the U.S.

The first known case of the Omicron variant detected in the U.S. was found in California on Wednesday. Since then, this mutation of the virus has been identified in at least five other states.

At a press conference on Friday, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci urged Americans to get COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, which he said increase "the number of neutralizing antibodies against all the variants."