We had an inkling that CNSNews.com would not treat unemployment numbers as harshly under President Trump than it did under President Obama. Looks like we’ve been proven right.
In her main story on January’s unemployment numbers, CNS reporter Susan Jones touted job outlook improvements — something she did only grudgingly under Obama — and seemed sad that she couldn’t credit Trump for it all:
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday released its first look at employment since Donald Trump became president, and although that report does not reflect actual Trump policy changes, it does include the period just before Trump became president and was tweeting about jobs saved.
According to BLS, the labor force participation rate improved in January, increasing two-tenths of a point to 62.9 percent, its best showing in four months.
By contrast to Jones’ enthusiasm for Trump “tweeting about jobs saved” — she insisted that January’s report “undoubtedly reflects anticipation of Trump’s policies” — CNS made every effort to downplay and discredit talk of jobs that were saved under Obama’s stimulus plan.
Jones also did something she rarely did during the Obama administration: explicitly state that one major reason for the high labor force participation rate she regularly blamed Obama for is the “retirement of baby boomers” and that “Members of the baby-boom generation will continue to retire from the labor force in large numbers.”
The only sidebar this time around — CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman declined to fret about black unemployment or tell us the “real” unemployment number this month as he usually has, and probably never will again during the Trump presidency — is from editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, who proclaimed that “The United States gained 5,000 jobs in manufacturing in January while losing 10,000 in government.”