More terrible economic news hit the struggling American people today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that only 74,000 jobs were created in December, the fewest number in five years. The unemployment rate dropped from 7% to 6.7%, but that is due only to the disheartening fact that 525,000 of the unemployed stopped looking for work. As a result, the labor force participation rate dropped to its lowest point since 1978.
Still, President Obama enjoyed a week of celebratory news about job creation thanks to our objective, unbiased, not-at-all liberal media once again hyping the notoriously unreliable jobs report from ADP. The result of this, naturally, is to give Obama a couple of good news cycles, but to do so based on numbers the media know are frequently wrong and just as frequently overstate the number of jobs created.
Today’s BLS jobs report — the real jobs report — is unqualified in its awfulness. And yet, these are the headlines Obama enjoyed this week thanks to a media irresponsibly using ADP. We’ll start with Business Insider, an outlet as devoted to the super wealthy as they are to an oppressive federal government:
Business Insider: PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS SURGE BY 238,000 IN DECEMBER
CNN: Strong job gains at end of 2013
NBC News: Jobs report could show things are looking up
Bloomberg: Companies in U.S. Added 238,000 Jobs in December, ADP Says
Wall Street Journal: U.S. Private-Sector Adds More Jobs Than Expected
BusinessWeek: Companies in U.S. Added 238,000 Jobs in December, ADP Says
These headlines are less than two days old.
CNN and MSNBC were just as giddy and just as dishonest.
The average monthly job creation in 2012 was 183,000. Last year it was 182,000.
We are going the wrong way, but the media is assuring America our economy is on the rebound — and doing so for at least the 5th time during Obama’s failed administration.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC