After a string of bad economic data the Obama Regime loving media is grasping at straws. The latest ray of hope for the media is July’s job numbers. 117,000 jobs were created in July. This is normally an anemic number but to the media this is proof the Obama Boom is real. The unemployment rate declined to 9.1%, mostly due to people dropping out of the job market. The media will ignore this and just trumpet the lower figure.
Hiring picked up slightly in July and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent, an optimistic sign after the worst day on Wall Street in nearly three years.
Employers added 117,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That’s better than the past two months, which were also revised higher.
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“Huge sigh of relief in the markets that we got a relatively good number—not an absolutely good number but a relatively good number. And don’t underestimate how important that is,” Mohamed El-Erian, co-CEO of bond manager Pimco, told CNBC.
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The unemployment rate fell partly because some unemployed workers stopped looking for work. That means they are no longer counted as unemployed.
The report follows a string of gloomy data that shows the economy has weakened.
Read the rest: Job Creation Inches Higher; Unemployment Slips to 9.1%
Pop the champagne corks because good times are here, NOT! A statistical quirk is why unemployment went down. The Obama Regime hopes more people leave the job market so the number declines further. The media will proclaim an economic miracle of epic proportions due to the ficticious unemployment rate.
The reality of the situation is that this figure of 117,000 is anemic. There is no Obama Boom no matter how much the media tries to promote this lie.
Update: Here’s a good analysis that shows this jobs report is not as good as the media is trumpeting.
Before getting too excited about the modest uptick in net job creation and a slight downward move in the unemployment rate, it’s probably worth a look under the hood.
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Let’s start with the reality that fewer people actually were working in July than in June.
According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics breakdown, there were 139,296,000 people working in July, compared to 139,334,000 the month before, or a drop of 38,000.
But the job creation number was positive and the unemployment rate went down, right? So how does that work?
It’s a product of something the government calls “discouraged workers,” or those who were unemployed but not out looking for work during the reporting period.
This is where the numbers showed a really big spike—up from 982,000 to 1.119 million, a difference of 137,000 or a 14 percent increase. These folks are generally not included in the government’s various job measures.
So the drop in the unemployment rate is fairly illusory—stick all those people back in the workforce and you wipe out the job creation and the drop in unemployment.
No matter how much the media will hype this report, they can’t cover up the reality. The Obama Boom is like the tooth fairy, a myth.