Unemployment

It "seems" that a bit of doubt seeped into an economy-related Associated Press report today. An hour later, it was gone. An early report by Josh Boak with a 10:22 a.m. time stamp found at a subscribing outlet's site described job growth in the past 12 months as "seemingly robust." An hour later, in an expansion of that early report primarily covering today's government release on July retail…

The Associated Press seems determined to become even worse at "fact-checking" politicians' statements than Politifact, the current cellar-dwellar in that regard. At the rate things are going, the wire service, in addition to richly earning its nickname "the Administration's Press" since January 2009, appears to be in line for yet another: "Associated Politifact." In his "fact check" following…

Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press and the "expert" he quoted in his writeup on the government's awful Employment Cost Index report seemed to be taking their cues from Steven Wright's deadpan comedy act. The problem, of course, is that they were writing and saying isn't funny at all. Rugaber, with his "expert" help, assembled an impressive array of understatements and misstatements in…

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence report released earlier today threw a heavy dose of cold water on the idea that the economy might finally achieve a broad-based, genuine recovery this year. Despite month after month of "all is well" reporting — and excuse-making when all hasn't been well — from the U.S. business press, the American public has apparently finally figured out that…

I guess the slogan of labor has changed from "Look for the union label" to "Look for the union waiver." The Los Angeles Times published a long front-page story early this morning on an issue some people thought disappeared after its initial exposure two months ago. The issue is whether union workers should be exempt from minimum wage laws, especially the sky-high minimums being enacted in some U…

Thursday's lead New York Times story on New York State raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers to a whopping $15 an hour was dominated almost completely by cheerleading for the wage. That's despite the fact that even liberal economists are queasy about such a drastic hike in the minimum wage, and that the hike risks hurting the very low-income workers it supposedly helps, by raising the…

As independent Senator Bernie Sanders appeared as a guest on Friday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo called out the Vermont socialist for distorting remarks made by Jeb Bush as the Florida Republican called for more full-time employment for part-time American workers.

As seen in two previous posts at NewsBusters, once the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't get the job market "nearing full health" he expected and briefly thought he got in Thursday's jobs report, he quickly downgraded it to "painting a mixed picture," and took it further down to "a bleaker picture" about eight hours later. That still left the problem, six years after the recession's…

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…

This post will document what transpired at the Associated Press on Thursday before and just after the release of the government's employment report. It should be a humiliating lesson to its business and economics writers. One would hope that they might learn to concentrate solely on discerning and accurately reporting the relevant facts, and to leave the analysis to others. (I know; fat chance…

As I was looking for news coverage of Thursday's horrid factory orders report from the Census Bureau late last week, I came across an incredibly optimistic Blomberg News report by Victoria Stilwell. The headline of her story on July 1, the day before that factory orders release, read: "Factories Making a Comeback as U.S. Domestic Demand Picks Up." My reaction: On what planet? It turns out that…

Though the Associated Press is now basically admitting it, we all knew it. Obamacare's 30-hours-per-week definition of a "full-time employee" for employer health insurance coverage purposes has been responsible for one of the fundamentally negative changes in the American workforce — a noticeable move away from full-time to part-time employment. In a report with a current Saturday morning time…

The folks at Reuters issued a pretty sloppy video yesterday relating to the government's June jobs report. That videos described yesterday's reported jobs gains of 223,000 as "broad-based." That's true only if you think having 222,000 of yeaterday's those seasonally adjusted gains occurring in service industries, while only 1,000 were seen in goods-producing industries, is "broad-based":

All three major broadcast networks covered on their Thursday evening newscasts the June 2015 jobs report, but it was ABC’s World News Tonight that neglected provide any further details and/or context beyond the unemployment rate and number of jobs added and omitted how hourly wages remained flat and the labor force participation rate sunk to its lowest level in 38 years. While CBS and NBC…