Remember that Dana Milbank piece about how unfairly the press treats Biden as opposed to Trump at the beginning of December?
Even the extraordinary news that jobless claims had dropped to the lowest level in 52 years came with a qualifier: “BUT, BUT, BUT … don’t expect [the numbers] to immediately change Americans’ negative perceptions of the economy.”
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman taking it, as she seems to take most things, as a personal attack on her, had a pretty snippy subtweet response, to which I happened to respond myself:
Here’s a perfect example, Maggie pic.twitter.com/GYMTpW9TuW
— Rob Wagner ๐ท๐ท๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ (@wagner_rob) December 4, 2021
You haven't read it very well then. Sorry, I really value your work, but you should have found out that the job numbers were drastically and unprecedentedly underestimated through the summer and had to be hugely revised, and that's why we should be skeptical about November.
— Against Yastronomical Odds (@Yastreblyansky) December 5, 2021
Because all year, if you were reading, the "mainstream media" had been highlighting monthly job numbers coming in under expectations as DISASTERS FOR BIDEN and, in the very same stories, just whispering the fact that the previous month's numbers were much better than originally reported.
That is, over the ten months from January through October 2021 the Bureau of Labor Statistics had managed to miss some 1.9 million jobs that way (per a CNBC report focusing on how it was Bad News For Joe Biden: "Messy job reports and unreliable labor forecasts take a toll on Biden’s first year"), but the papers kept ignoring that and reporting the DISASTERS FOR BIDEN as if publicizing the bad-looking numbers and the bad effect they were likely to have on the president's approval rating were the whole point of the story—as opposed to, you know, telling readers about the actual state of the economy.
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| Meanwhile, in the latest (seasonally-adjusted) findings, last summer's figures are no longer as huge as previously advertised but still very strong. Via Brad DeLong. |
So it took a while, but looks like I was onto something, not just for November
but December and January as well:
JUST IN: Strong jobs report for January as the US economy added 467,000 jobs. December revised to 510,000 from 199,000. November revised to 647,000 from 249,000.
— Steve Grzanich (@SteveGrzanich) February 4, 2022
What's the reason for the underestimates?
That CNBC post blamed the pandemic:
the lingering Covid-19 pandemic makes the job of collecting reliable numbers more difficult — and less reflective of the final count after revisions than in pre-pandemic times.
That means President Biden, who will mark a year in office Jan. 20, paid a political price for what were seen as “missed expectations” that appear to have helped to sour voters on his handling of the economy as the Democrats try to hold control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
But it didn't anywhere address the possibility that newspapers could ever run a headline like
BLS Monthly Report Shows Biden Economy in Far Better Shape Than You Were Led To Believe
It can't be Good News for Joe Biden if we make sure it's not news at al.
Also, while we're up,
In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 23 cents to $31.63. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 5.7 percent. In January, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 17 cents to $26.92.
That 5.7% is a lot closer to the December through December inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index (7.0%) than we've been led to believe too, and closing in (it was down to an annualized rate of 0.5% in December, after hitting 0.9% and 0.8% in October and November respectively, and three months makes a trend). But I'm not seeing any headlines about that either, what's up with that?
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