Drive-By Media Can't Spin Unemployment Numbers AnymoreApril 26, 2012
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RUSH: People are asking me, "Are you okay?" I'm fine. Brian thinks people think I might be depressed because of Romney. No. This election is about Obama. And what I was gonna say is, in a sane world the Democrats woulda gotten rid of this guy and put somebody else in like Hillary. This is such a disaster of a presidency, such a disaster of an administration. This country, the unemployment numbers are out there, and the media has not even tried to cover this up anymore. Let me give you some of the headlines that the media ran on the unemployment.
First, Christopher Rugaber, AP: "US Unemployment Aid Requests Near 3-Month High."
Now, this is a change in tone from the AP. Let me give you the numbers here. "The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits remained stuck near a three-month high last week, a sign that hiring has likely slowed since winter. The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications dipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000. It was little changed from the previous week's figure." This figure is misleading, 59 -- I think these are the right numbers -- 59 out of the last 60 weeks, the unemployment number has been revised upward the week after it has been released.
Now, in businesses tried this, CEOs would be in jail, or they certainly would be charged. If CEOs put out numbers that were never right and a week later when nobody was paying attention they changed them and made them accurate and therefore worse, the CEO would be in trouble. Fifty-nine of the last 60 weeks, I think that's the number, 59 of the last 60 weeks the unemployment number has been revised upward or gotten worse the week after it was released. Let me explain it as it's specific to this week's number.
Now, the AP headline: "US Unemployment Aid Requests Near 3-Month High." If they were true to form, they could have had a headline that says unemployment down by 1,000 claims. They could have run a story like they have been doing for the last year or year and a half to try to convince readers that the unemployment situation was getting better. But they didn't. "US Unemployment Aid Requests Near 3-Month High." In actual fact, this week's number only went down because last week's number was revised up by 3,000.
So if you compare apples to apples, today's unrevised number is actually up 2,000 from last week's unrevised number. But this is another game that the Obama Labor Department, the Obama news media play week after week to give us an entirely false impression of the jobs market. But still, the shocking thing here is that the AP seems to be tired of playing the game. There's no unexpected. There's no surprised. There's no any of the usual words that are found in these unemployment stories. Okay, that's AP.
Here's Bloomberg: "More Americans Than Projected Filed Jobless Claims Last Week -- More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the labor market is taking time to improve." Well, what is that? Just a couple three weeks ago the labor market was booming when the number went down by three or four thousand. When it finally dipped blow 400,000 applications, why, we were back! We'd turned the corner. We had hit the wall and we were on the rebound. And now "US Unemployment Aid Requests Near Three-Month High," and "More Americans Than Projected Filed Jobless Claims Last Week."
And here's Reuters: "Jobless Claims Stay Elevated as Labor Market Gains Stall." Three consecutive Drive-By news stories on how bad the unemployment picture is.
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