Omission Watch: Job Creation Staggering at 'Slowest Post-Recession Rate Since Great Depression'

May 21st, 2011 3:26 PM

Here’s more figures suggesting most media outlets are skipping around the bad economic news. On the front of Friday’s USA Today was this story by Dennis Cauchon:

Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression.

The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s.

In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009....

This unique recession has been particularly unfriendly to job-seekers, experts say. "There was too much employment in housing, and that isn't coming back — and frankly shouldn't come back," says Amar Bhide, a Tufts University professor

The housing collapse and productivity gains on the factory floor have made it hard for the economy to absorb workers without a college degree and young people generally, says Carl Camden, president of Kelly Services, a global staffing firm. Manufacturers are producing more value than ever in the USA with a fraction of the workers needed before, he says. 

It would be nice to see stronger gains in the economy and more confidence with more fiscally conservative Republicans getting a hand on the steering wheel in Washington, but it still looks glum. But our media presented the economy in much more pessimistic terms when the numbers were much better under George W. Bush. See Dan Gainor and Warren Anderson's major study of 2005, "Hit Job: Networks Emphasize Layoffs In A Year of 2 Million New Jobs." They found: 

More than 2 million new jobs were created in 2005 but that wasn’t the story presented by the evening news. The three broadcast networks downplayed strong growth and, instead, emphasized negatives such as corporate layoffs and outsourcing in more than half the stories about jobs or unemployment. As Trish Regan of “CBS Evening News” put it in the July 20 broadcast, “Twenty-five thousand layoffs and more on the way. I’m Trish Regan with why the jobs picture is looking very ‘pink’ these days.”