Are they coming around?

.

We understand that there was much shouting and rejoicing at MSNBC when the jobs numbers came out Friday morning showing the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%. If we only added 96,000 jobs in August, an anemic number to be sure, then how did unemployment drop?

While driving to Vegas, we had AM radio on for pretty much the entire time and we were picking up stations out of San Diego, then LA/OC, then out to the high desert and finally the Vegas stations. Witout fail, every single news break on every station felt compelled to give America a short lesson in how the government calculates unemployment figures: The Bureau of Labor only counts you against the unemployment figure if you are out of work but are currently seeking employment. We had 96,000 people find work during August, but over 360,000 people simply gave up looking for work so they were not counted as being part of the labor force. For every 1 person that found work, 4 said eff it, we’re sitting this one out.

Is that clear, MSNBC?




In all our years, we had not heard news outlets, on such a consistent basis explain this seemingly contradictory set of facts.

Is the media finally coming around or are they simply hedging their bets should the unthinkable happen in November and they can say, “See? We told you so”.

We’ll hedge ourselves, by saying probably the latter.




Oh, and if that didn’t quite grab ya, here are some more totally awesome numbers courtesy the Bureau of Labor:

(h/t): AEI

From Citigroup:

Average hourly earnings were unchanged, and up just 1.7% over the past year, matching the slowest pace on record.

All proving once again, all those degrees from Harvard aren't worth the lamb skin they are printed on.