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Who’d have thought that this news would send the right over the cliff?
The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 7.8 percent in September and reached its lowest level since President Barack Obama took office, providing a boost to his re-election bid.
The Labor Department said on Friday that employers added 114,000 workers to their payrolls last month, a moderate number, but it said a combined 86,000 more jobs were created in the prior two months than it had previously thought.
Other aspects of the report also were strong. In particular, a separate survey of households found a big surge in hiring. That pushed the jobless rate down by 0.3 percentage point to its lowest level since January 2009.
I’d like to say this was senility, but one-percenter Jack Welch simply put on his tin foil hat on and modeled it on Twitter.
But he later had to admit to Chris Matthews on Hardball that he had no facts in evidence…
“Maybe they weren’t right at 8.5 [percent], maybe they weren’t right at 8.4,” Welch said. “But it seems coincidental that, one month before the election, they would end up at 7.8. The president today is on the stump. The president, all he’s talked about is 7.8. He didn’t mention 600,000 jobs added in the government sector.”
…Matthews pointed out that Keith Hall, who served as BLS commissioner during George W. Bush’s administration, told The Wall Street Journal that kind of interference was impossible.
“There’s nothing wrong with the numbers,” said Mr. Hall. “The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.”
Here’s the video…
Also see: Meet The Conservatives Who Think Today’s Job Numbers Are A Conspiracy
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3 Comments
Is Jack Welch a bit bitter that the company that he left in shambles and was resurrected by the auto bailout (provided by team Obama, and shunned by team Mittens) and is now in much better shape as a company, and thereby casting him in a bad light as a CEO?
Well, that, and he doesn’t want folks to notice that his flagship creation, GE Capital, is deeply tied to the Petters Ponzi Scandal.
Of course, he has no facts to back it up. Even if he were right, how would he get those facts?
But, are we saying that numbers can’t be massaged? That no one can “work closely” with the Bureau to get the best number humanely possible? That no government agency would ever massage numbers to help a sitting President get re-elected? Is that really what we are saying? Since when?
Hell, I don’t know what is behind those numbers any month of any year. I do know that somewhere between Hoover and Bush, one or more Presidents changed the whole method of calculating the unemployment number because high unemployment makes incumbent Presidents look bad.
I also know that administration reps have been saying on TV yesterday and today that the number is “dynamic” or terms like that.
I don’t know one way or the other, what the real unemployment number is under any method of calculation and, I submit, neither does anyone at FDL or MSNBC. However, I know that going under 8% for the first time in years one month before the election is very convenient for Obama and, like Welch, I cannot think of a reason.
Am I saying that the number was massaged? No. Am I saying that it is out of the realm of possiblity because our government is always totally honest with us and therefore such a thing is unthinkable? Please.