Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones has figured out a way to distract from non-Trump-friendly employment numbers: lead with a rah-rah Trump quote. And that's what she does in her lead article on June's numbers:
"Our economic policy can be summed up in three very simple but beautiful but beautiful words," President Donald Trump told a rally in Montana Thursday evening: "Jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.
On Friday, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 213,000 jobs in June, a strong number; the number of employed Americans, 155,576,000, set its tenth record of the Trump presidency; but the number of unemployed Americans (which includes people who are actively looking for jobs) increased by almost half-a-million. The unemployment rate increased two tenths of a point to 4.0 percent.
Jones' article is accompanied by Terry Jeffrey's usual article about increased manufacturing jobs and Michael W. Chapman's usual article about falling black unemployment -- needless to say, neither of them reported that both of these trends began under President Obama.
A new feature this time, though, is an article by Craig Bannister highlighting that "The national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. labor force fell to the lowest level on record in June of 2018." But the accompanying chart shows that this trend began as well under Obama. Bannister did concede this in an article, but in a convoluted way that tries to make Obama look bad and avoid giving him credit for the decline:
During the 17 full months of the Trump administration, beginning in February 2017, Hispanic-Latino unemployment has averaged 5.0%.
In contrast, the national Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate averaged 9.4% during President Barack Obama’s eight years (96 months) in office, impacted by the 2008 recession, which officially ended in June of 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hispanic-Latino unemployment was 11.3% during Obama’s first full month in office, February of 2009. By January of 2017, the Hispanic-Latino unemployment rate had dropped to 5.9%. Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017.
That kind of bias is how CNS rolls, sadly.
