It’s a Bernie Sanders dreamland. In socialism, government takes over the means of production. One of the first steps is to grow government. The latest jobs report gave us terrifying proof that’s happening as government jobs are now 9,932,000 more than manufacturing jobs.
9,932,000. That’s not Venezuela. Or even Cuba. But we’ve grown government more than journalists care to admit. Even as both presidential candidates vow to boost manufacturing jobs, the reality is they lag far behind government.
The broadcast networks failed to bring up the August jobs report released on Sept. 2, on the evening news programs for the entire following week, in spite of the economy being foremost in voters’ minds and politicians’. Hillary Clinton wants to spend $10 billion as part of “her vision for American manufacturing.” Donald Trump vows to “reclaim millions of American jobs” in manufacturing.
That jobs report showed 151,000 jobs added in the month and unchanged unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. That was more than 100,000 jobs less than in July. Although neither of those numbers were striking, if network journalists had dived deeper into the data they could have found news to report. For example, the number of government employees had grown by nearly 25,000 jobs, while manufacturing shrank by 14,000.
From 1939 through 1989, the number of manufacturing jobs surpassed the number of government jobs, according to CNS News. It’s been downhill since.
CNS reported on Sept. 2, that as of August the number of government jobs was 9,932,000 more than the number of manufacturing jobs using seasonally adjusted figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
MRC Business reviewed CBS Evening News, ABC World News and NBC Nightly News from Sept. 2, through Sept. 7, and found no mention of the jobs report or unemployment rate or the size of government employment. World News from Sept. 3, and Nightly News from Sept. 4, were not counted because the shows were unavailable to be watched.
The networks’ decision to ignore the latest jobs report was not an isolated example. They pick and choose which economic news to report. In August, World News and Evening News reported the “good news for the economy” when the July jobs report showed 255,000 jobs added, but just a week earlier they’d ignored underperforming GDP.
On July 29, the Commerce Department announced that the economy grew by only 1.2 percent in the second quarter. That was a disappointment according to The Wall Street Journal, but wasn’t even newsworthy to the network evening shows that night or the following two nights. But they had time to report on a new Harry Potter book.
Although the economy overall is no longer feeling like “The Great Recession,” many economic indicators remain weak, including economic growth rates. MRC Business found that between Jan. 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, the networks barely covered six key negative indicators of the economy at large. But they heralded positive signs like a “hiring surge,” lower gas and oil prices and other “signs of a strengthening economy.”
