CNSNews.com ran into another one of those situations where the latest month of Trump-era unemployment news was too bad to spin away in yet another fit of pro-Trump stenography.
The main story by Susan Jones led with the good news, but also gave prominent play to the bad, mainly because it directly impacted its longtime obsession, the labor force participation rate:
The economy added 261,000 jobs in October – the most since President Trump took office — and the nation’s unemployment rate dropped another tenth of a point to 4.1 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.
But a record number of Americans – 95,385,000 – were not in the labor force in October, and the critical labor force participation rate dropped four-tenths of a point to 62.7 percent, a disappointing show, as 76,500 Americans left the civilian labor force..
The previous “not in the labor force” record of 95,102,000 was set in December 2016, the final full month of the Barack Obama presidency.
That story was CNS’ lead story when posted early on Nov. 3, but it didn’t stay that way for long — can’t havenegative news on Trump leading a pro-Trump “news” site, can we? So that was quickly supplanted as the lead by its sidebar — the usual story by Terry Jeffrey on manufacturing jobs — which had the necessary pro-Trump spin. That story remained the lead for the remainder of Nov. 3.