ABC: "People overreacting" to June jobs report

Like all the alphabet networks, ABC has always been in the tank for Democrats, and particularly for Duh Won. And here's the latest example of 100 percent pure, unalloyed pro-Democrat propaganda from them.

Seems the gummint's June "jobs report" was released this morning (Friday, which minimizes its impact on the news cycle).

Guess what. Can you guess? I mean, really, if you just pulled something out of the air, what would you say?

How 'bout "Unemployment unexpectedly edged up to 9.2 percent." Oh, and the private sector added just 18,000 jobs.

Totally unexpected!

Not a single person in gummint had the slightest inkling that would happen!

But wait--we're just getting started.

See, in May experts forecast 110,000 jobs would be created. But unexpectedly --there's that word again--the figure initially reported was a "modest" 54,000.

So the experts were too optimistic, by a factor of two, and ABC says "modest" job creation numbers??

But not to worry: As often happens with these things, a month after the May report was first released, it was "revised." And it was revised to...can you guess?

Downward. To 25,000.

Let me see if I've got this straight: Not only were the forecasts too optimistic by a factor of two, the initial report was also off--in the optimistic direction--by a factor of more than two??

Jeez, if a private analyst blew a critical estimate by a factor of two I'm pretty sure they'd be looking for a new job! Ah, but in gummint you can be this far off all the time--provided, of course, that your error is in the direction that makes the preznit look better.

So...in May a report of 54,000 jobs added was termed "modest." Then it was later revised down to less than half that. (And of course revision of a month-old number isn't considered very newsworthy by the time it finally appears.) And now the June report comes in at less than one-third of the figure ABC's reporter called "modest."

So what adjectives did ABC's reporter use for this new, sharply lower number?

Why, she quoted some analyst saying "People were overreacting to that bad news."

Yeah, dat's it. ABC exhausted their euphemisms by calling the May job-creation figure "modest," so from any rational perspective the June figure--remember it's less than a fourth of the May number-- should be "ghastly", "awful", "miserable." But they can't do this without tarring their messiah.

Thus they refuse to call the new jobs figure "bad news," except by quoting someone dismissing it by prefacing it with "People were overreacting."

Amazing. But predictable.

Oh, and for those who may be wondering: As I recall, on average roughly 200,000 people enter the U.S. pool of job-seekers each month. Thus if the economy adds fewer jobs than that, the number of unemployed should increase.

And indeed, it went from--well, let's see what the Bureau of Labor statistics said in its press release: "...the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.2 percent."

Wait. "...rate was little changed" implies it did change at least slightly. You'd think the direction of the change might be of interest, no? Why do you suppose the BLS chose not to tell us which way it went?

Right, sparky: Because unemployment ROSE a tenth.

Ya think they would have trumpeted "Unemployment down!!!" if it had changed by exactly the same amount in the other direction?

Damn straight.

They do note--in the 4th 'graf, after three grafs of "almost unchanged," that the number of newly unemployed (jobless for less than 5 weeks) was up by 412,000 in June.

Does that sound like a recovery to you? And if a Republican were president, do you suppose that latter figure would be headline news?

And an update: Here's how Reuters--usually a reliable Dem supporter--reported it:

U.S. job growth ground to a near halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest workers in nine months...