Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to play fast and loose with economic numbers. Editor in chief Terry Jeffrey demonstrates again how it's done in an April 30 article:
A majority of the Americans who worked for the minimum wage or less in 2013 were 24 years old or younger, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and only 0.8 percent of American workers were 29 or older and worked for the minimum wage or less.
[...]
In total in 2013, according to the BLS, 143,929,000 people were employed in some kind of job in the United States. Of these, a total of 3,300,000—or about 2.3 percent—earned the minimum wage or less. Of those earning the minimum wage or less, 1,663,000 were between 16 and 24 years old. That equaled about 50.4 percent of the people earning the minimum wage or less.
Another 436,000 earning the minimum wage or less were from 25 to 29 year of age.
That leave 1,201,000—or 0.8 percent of American workers—who earned the minimum wage or less and were older than 29.
What Jeffrey fails to spell out: These numbers mean that 36% of people making minimum wage were older than 29.
But for some reason he's rather compare it to the much larger pool of all workers -- making the number deceptively insignificant. Wonder why that is...
