CNN lauds 266K new jobs after dismissing last year’s 10M new jobs as not good enough

May 14, 2021

By John Ransom

CNN offers a case a point in how the media slants coverage, especially on economic issues, to benefit liberals, twisting bad news into good news and vice versa. 

And the contrast could not have been greater during the pandemic. 

This week, to the dismay of Wall Street and Main Street, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in April the economy created just 266,000 jobs.  

It was a big disappointment given that economists estimated that the number of jobs created would reach around 1 million for the month. 

March’s jobs numbers were revised downward, painting a daunting picture of a labor market that should be benefiting from a national re-opening after a year of COVID lockdowns. 

And while CNN acknowledged the disappointment, it also felt constrained to say that the disappointment was only felt by the “pundits,” that ordinary Americans should be “jumping for joy. 

“While pundits are arguing, Americans are on the same page. Consumer confidence is soaring, retail sales jumped in March and gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity — is on pace for a super-strong 11% annual growth rate this quarter, according to the Atlanta Fed,” CNN reported.

That’s all true, but has to be read with a large admixture of skepticism. People are more confident, retail sales are going up and gross domestic product should be rolling as the nation reopens. 

But the question remains: Are we doing better or worse than we should be?  

The main engine of the economy is jobs, and the last report spells trouble if it continues. 

It spells the worst jobs recovery since Obama, maybe even worse than Obama’s. 

So now let’s run back to 11 months ago, when economists expected the economy to lose 8.3 million jobs in May of 2020 as the pandemic took hold, but instead added 2.8 million jobs, a net difference of 11 million workers. 

Was CNN celebrating the saving of those jobs and the addition of others?

Nope. CNN wanted you to know: “That’s not the whole story.”

“Although the unemployment rate has come down from 14.7% in April, it remains higher than at any point during the Great Recession,” said CNN. 

CNN then listed all the problems from worsening COVID infections to children suffering from malnutrition to gaps between white and black unemployment, most of which could not be solved by a jobs report.  

“Americans are facing more uncertainty in the months to come even as the economy is reopening. At the top of the list of worries is a resurgence of Covid-19 infections. Parts of the country are already dealing with that, and some states have delayed or paused their reopening plans accordingly. That means it could take even longer for jobs to resurface after the lockdown, said CNN.

This after months of scaring Americans with stories of Great Depression-like jobs losses because of COVID. 

For the record, the economy went on to create 10 million new jobs in the eight months since May 2020 until January 2021, with unemployment diving from 14.8 percent to 6.3 percent.   

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