The Labor Department released absolutely horrendous employment numbers Friday that are going to be difficult for the Obama-loving media to positively spin.
Moments after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that only 74,000 jobs had been created in December with the unemployment rate declining due to almost 500,000 people leaving the job market, Christine Romans on CNN's New Day called the report “a big miss,” “a real shocker,” “a big disappointment,” and concluded that the jobless rate “fell in part because people simply gave up” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
KATE BOLDUAN, CO-HOST: The Labor Department released the December jobs report, the final jobs report of 2013. Business correspondent Christine Romans has the details. A big surprise.
CHRISTINE ROMANS: A big miss, a big miss. Economists really got this wrong. 74,000 jobs created in the month, the last month of the year. Only 74,000. You remember you had economists all week revising upward their expectations closer to 200,000. Here's the real shocker: the jobless rate drops, drops to 6.7 percent.
BOLDUAN: We should be cheering.
ROMANS: How could that be, the lowest jobless rate since 2008 basically? More than half a million people just left the job market, just stopped looking for work. Total jobs created for the year 2.2 million making it basically on par with 2012. So basically, last year we created as many jobs as we did the year before. Now we have a whole year's picture. For the month, 74,000 jobs. That is a big disappointment. A lot of economists thought that it would be much better than that. Then you look at the jobless rate. It fell in part because people simply gave up.
Indeed. All these people dropping out of the labor force sent the participation to a 36-year-low.
Not how the Obama administration or his media were looking to begin the new year, especially with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) involved in his Bridgegate scandal that has completely sucked all the air out of the room the past few days.
Will these horrible economic numbers divert the press's attention from the Garden State as a result?
Or will they figure out a way to just report the unemployment rate drop and stay on Christie?
Stay tuned.
