The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted.
I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on relaying the facts. But there's more.
Ahead of the government's report, Rugaber claimed that it would that it would "likely" show that the job market "is nearing full health."
He stuck to his guns in the first paragraph of the story he filed shortly after the report was released, claiming that the job market is "moving close to full health," despite acknowledging clear weaknesses in two paragraphs which followed. The first paragraph's unsupportable take on things appeared to designed to ensure that "good news" reports would emanate from online outlets, email alerts and AP-subscribing broadcasters across the nation.
A mere half-hour after his initial post-release report, Rugaber began to reverse field. Now the very same government report which showed that the job market was "moving close to full health" at 8:39 a.m. was "paint(ing) a mixed picture" at 9:12 a.m.
Thanks to the AP's annoying (and keister-covering) practice of sending older reports down the memory hole once they've been updated or revised, I didn't know until this morning when I stumbled across it at a non-AP site that Rugaber downgraded his evaluation of the results and their potential impact again late Thursday afternoon.
Here it is, with a 5:06 p.m. time stamp (bolds are mine):
US unemployment falls to 7-year low, but wages are flat
U.S. unemployment fell to a seven-year low of 5.3 percent and employers hired at a solid pace in June, but other gauges of the job market drew a bleaker picture: A wave of people stopped looking for work, and paychecks failed to budge.
The figures released Thursday capture the persistently uneven nature of the recovery from the Great Recession.
The economy gained 223,000 jobs last month, and unemployment edged down from 5.5 percent in May, the Labor Department reported.
That is the lowest jobless rate since April 2008, when it was 5 percent. It eventually soared to 10 percent in late 2009 after the recession had done its worst.
Yet unemployment dropped this time mainly because many people out of work apparently got discouraged and gave up looking for a job. The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they're actively searching.
In fact, the proportion of Americans working or looking for work slipped to a 38-year low.
At the same time, wages have stalled, rising just 2 percent over the past 12 months.
The mixed data suggest the Federal Reserve may put off plans to raise short-term interest rates and end the stimulus effort that began in 2008. Most economists had expected the Fed to make its move in September.
So Rugaber went from "moving close to full health" to "paint(ing) a mixed picture" to "a bleaker picture" in the space of about eight hours.
Now let's look at how Rugaber's take on the jobs report's possible impact on whether or not the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates changed over the course of Thursday:
(3:30 a.m., before the release; opening paragraph)
U.S. employers likely hired at another strong pace in June, a sign that the job market is nearing full health and giving the Federal Reserve reason to raise interest rates as early as September.
(8:39 a.m., just after the release; opening paragraph)
U.S. employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent, a seven-year low. The numbers reflect a job market moving close to full health and raise expectations that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates as early as September.
(9:12 a.m., only a half-hour after the initial post-release assessment; seventh paragraph)
Thursday's report may heighten expectations that the Fed will boost the key short-term rate it controls in September.
(5:06 p.m.; ninth and tenth paragraphs)
The mixed data suggest the Federal Reserve may put off plans to raise short-term interest rates and end the stimulus effort that began in 2008. Most economists had expected the Fed to make its move in September.
"After this report, I think it would make sense to wait until December to start that slow rate increase," said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at the jobs site Indeed and a professor at George Washington University.
So Rugaber went from a nearly definite "giving the Fed ... reason to raise rates" to a still mostly definite "rais(ing) expectations" to a doubt-inducing "may heighten expectations" to a contrary-leaning "may put off" in 13-1/2 hours — all over the same government report.
I wonder if Obamacare covers AP reporter-induced whiplash?
I should also note that the AP's now-"bleaker" assessment still, as usual, ignores something I observed at my home blog Thursday morning, namely that "anyone looking at June results form the previous four years and seeing how they seasonally converted will agree that the seasonally adjusted results could have, and probably should have, come in at about 175,000 or lower instead of the 223,000 seen" in the government's report.
All of this should be humiliating to Rugaber and the AP. If there's any sign of it, I sure don't see it. To me, it looks like it's all in a day's work: Make things look fine while people are paying attention; change the analysis to make it more accurate after the initial interest ends; and eliminate as much as possible any evidence of earlier, inaccurate reports.
As I indicated yesterday, the cracked-up AP team of economics writers still wasn't done, producing a later writeup describing the job market's alleged "new normal" which I guess we're supposed to learn to tolerate. After all, there's no possible way that the malaise it describes could be traced to the Obama administration's economic policies (that's sarcasm, in case anyone doubts).
I'll get to that in a later post.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
