CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch

As it has for the past few months — and as it regularly does with Democratic presidents — CNSNews.com obscured November’s good employment numbers by cherry-picking other numbers. Susan actually led with the good numbers in her lead article, yet the headline read “Dropping: Labor Force Participation, Number of Employed; Rising: Labor Force Dropouts”:

The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 263,000 jobs in November, higher than the anticipated 200,000; and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent.

But there are troubling trends in Friday’s employment report:

Despite the rising cost of living, the number of employed Americans dropped for a second straight month, falling by 138,000 to 158,470,000; the number of Americans counted as not in the labor force — meaning they have no job and are not looking for one — increased by 359,000 to 100,227,000, the highest this number has been in a year; and the labor force participation rate declined for a third straight month, to 61.1 percent in November.

People who are not in the labor force are retirees, students, caregivers, and others who have dropped out.

Conversely, the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.

When Jones got to her preferred number, the labor force participation rate, she did have to admit that Biden’s record improved since he took offices while het again touting how much better it was under Donald Trump:

In November, the civilian non-institutional population in the United States was 264,708,000. That included all people 16 and older who did not live in an institution, such as a prison, nursing home or long-term care facility.

Of that civilian non-institutional population, 164,481,000 were participating in the labor force, meaning they were either employed or unemployed — they either had a job or were actively looking for one during the last month. This resulted in a labor force participation rate of 62.1 percent in November — down from 62.2 percent in October; 62.3 in September; and 62.4 percent in August, so the trend continues to be negative.

The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today’s number, 62.1 percent, is more than a point below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent recorded in February 2020, just before COVID-prompted shutdowns.

There was no sidebar this time, such as the typical story from editor Terry Jeffrey on government employment.