Chuck Schumer lashed out at Donald Trump on Friday after the president celebrated the sharp drop in the unemployment rate in August.
The unemployment rate stood at 10.2 percent a month earlier, which means it dropped nearly 18 percent in a single month. To put it differently, the rate fell by 1.8 percentage points.
Senator Schumer, the New Yoirk Democrat and minority leader in the U.S. Senate, took a different stance in 2012, when he criticized Republicans for not celebrating a more modest decline in unemployment from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. That three-tenths improvement, or 3.7 percent, was celebrated by Democrats after months of labor market stagnation.
“Republicans should welcome a lower unemployment rate, not curse it as an unwanted October surprise,” Schumer said in a statement.