CNSNews.com’s pattern of distortion of the latest unemployment numbers follows what it has been doing for the past several months by obsessing over the labor participation rate, as Susan Jones does this time around:
The number of Americans not in the labor force last month totaled 94,446,000–a slight improvement from the 94,513,000 not in the labor force in October–and the labor force participation rate increased a tenth of a point, with 62.5 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population either holding a job or actively seeking one.
(The labor force participation rate of 62.4 percent in September and October was the lowest in 38 years.)
CNS won’t tell you that the labor participation rate is pretty misleading if you’re suggesting, as Jones and CNS clearly are, that there are 90 milion Americans who can’t find a job. Even the conservative American Enterprise Institute agrees, pointing out that 41 million of them are retired, and an additional 15 million are not looking for work because they are in school.
We don’t recall CNS ever providing a breakdown of the not-in-labor-force for its readers — presumably because it wants to make the unemployment numbers look as bad as possible for Obama, even when they are not.
Jones’ article is joined by one from CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman with the headline “9.4%: Black Unemployment More Than Double White Unemployment.” Needless to say, Chapman can’t be bothered to explain that black unemployment has always been double white unemployment, or at least since the Labor Department began tracking unemployment for blacks in 1972.