A month has hardly passed without the press falling victim to the Kerry campaign’s repeated attempts to distort the number of jobs lost since President Bush entered office, and September is no exception. (The irony, as we will explain, is that the job picture has been dreary since 2001; there’s no need for an opponent to exaggerate that dismal record, or for the press to gild the dandelion.)
It began back in March, when the Kerry campaign was throwing around a figure of 3 million jobs lost during the Bush administration, when the real number was 2.2 million net jobs lost (3 million was the figure for the private sector). Then in July it was 2 million jobs lost, when the real net loss was 1.1 million jobs. And now, with new job numbers out over the weekend, the campaign press again painted a muddled picture.
On Friday, in a crowded news cycle that included the end of the Republican National Convention, the Russian hostage tragedy, Hurricane Frances, and President Clinton’s health problems, the Labor Department announced that the economy added 144,000 jobs in August.
The next day, the New York Times reported on Sen. Kerry’s latest line from the stump in which he cited a loss of 1.7 million jobs since 2000. The New York Times pointed out, much later in the piece, that “[Kerry] used outdated figures for the job losses since 2000; the Labor Department now says 1.6 million jobs have been lost, not 1.7 million.” But, the very next day, the New York Times editorial board wrote, “The reality is that unless President Bush pulls nearly one million jobs out of a hat in the next four months, he will indeed become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in employment in a single term in the White House.”
What’s a Times reader to believe? 1.7 million jobs lost, 1.6 million, or “nearly a million”?
Let’s see if the Associated Press can help us.
Overnight the AP ran a story stating, “With 1.7 million jobs created over the past year, the economy is still down 913,000 jobs overall since [Bush] took office,” but then later on quoted John Kerry at a campaign stop in North Carolina critizing President Bush for “a loss of 1.6 million jobs,” without calling attention to the discrepancy.
Maybe the regional press did better. How about the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette?
On Sunday, the steeltown stalwart left its readers with the impression that about a million jobs had been loss, and then today reported the number at 1.6 million.
We could go on, but it’s doubtful there’s much help out there. The press’ failure to accurately report on the job losses is due to its continuing refusal to clearly explain the difference between job numbers based on overall payroll statistics, and those based on private sector payroll statistics. This allows the Kerry campaign to cite statistics that are clearly intended to paint the bleakest outlook for voters.
Since President Bush took office in January of 2001, while jobs have indeed been lost in the private sector, they have increased in the public sector. Predictably, the private sector job losses are what Kerry most often cites on the stump. In January 2001 there were 111.6 million private sector jobs. That number has dropped to a projected 109.9 million jobs leaving the total number of private sector jobs lost at 1.65 million.
On the other hand, in January 2001 there were 132.4 million total jobs in the non-farm private and public sectors, a figure that fell to 131.5 million as of last month, for a net job loss under Bush at 913,000.
This isn’t rocket science, and the press has had plenty of time now to learn diligence in pointing out which measure which candidate is using to decry or promote the state of the economy. Until then, the candidates will pick and choose the numbers of their choice without any accountability.
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.