Wages & Prices

Several commenters at my econ-related posts during the past several months here at NewsBusters and my home blog have noted how Washington's mix of high deficits, over-regulation, and quantitative easing never seem to get any kind of blame for the economy in establishment press coverage. One could hardly find a better example of that deliberate avoidance than Josh Boak's writeup today at the…

It "seems" that a bit of doubt seeped into an economy-related Associated Press report today. An hour later, it was gone. An early report by Josh Boak with a 10:22 a.m. time stamp found at a subscribing outlet's site described job growth in the past 12 months as "seemingly robust." An hour later, in an expansion of that early report primarily covering today's government release on July retail…

In the liberal universe, there's no correlation between hard work or ingenuity and financial success.  As President Obama recently put it, the rich are simply "society's lottery winners."   Sounding a similar theme, Al Sharpton today declared it "astounding" that Rand Paul believes that income inequality is due to "some people working harder."  Astounding, indeed!  What's wrong with Rand?  How…

Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press and the "expert" he quoted in his writeup on the government's awful Employment Cost Index report seemed to be taking their cues from Steven Wright's deadpan comedy act. The problem, of course, is that they were writing and saying isn't funny at all. Rugaber, with his "expert" help, assembled an impressive array of understatements and misstatements in…

Yet another important economic statistic confidently predicted to rise has fallen — hard. This time it was June's pending sales of existing homes. Just in time for summer, they were predicted to increase by a seasonally adjusted 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. Instead they fell by 1.8 percent, the steepest drop since December 2013. Additionally, May's original 0.9 percent increase was revised down…

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence report released earlier today threw a heavy dose of cold water on the idea that the economy might finally achieve a broad-based, genuine recovery this year. Despite month after month of "all is well" reporting — and excuse-making when all hasn't been well — from the U.S. business press, the American public has apparently finally figured out that…

I guess the slogan of labor has changed from "Look for the union label" to "Look for the union waiver." The Los Angeles Times published a long front-page story early this morning on an issue some people thought disappeared after its initial exposure two months ago. The issue is whether union workers should be exempt from minimum wage laws, especially the sky-high minimums being enacted in some U…

Thursday's lead New York Times story on New York State raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers to a whopping $15 an hour was dominated almost completely by cheerleading for the wage. That's despite the fact that even liberal economists are queasy about such a drastic hike in the minimum wage, and that the hike risks hurting the very low-income workers it supposedly helps, by raising the…

As seen in two previous posts at NewsBusters, once the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber didn't get the job market "nearing full health" he expected and briefly thought he got in Thursday's jobs report, he quickly downgraded it to "painting a mixed picture," and took it further down to "a bleaker picture" about eight hours later. That still left the problem, six years after the recession's…

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted. I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on…

This post will document what transpired at the Associated Press on Thursday before and just after the release of the government's employment report. It should be a humiliating lesson to its business and economics writers. One would hope that they might learn to concentrate solely on discerning and accurately reporting the relevant facts, and to leave the analysis to others. (I know; fat chance…

All three major broadcast networks covered on their Thursday evening newscasts the June 2015 jobs report, but it was ABC’s World News Tonight that neglected provide any further details and/or context beyond the unemployment rate and number of jobs added and omitted how hourly wages remained flat and the labor force participation rate sunk to its lowest level in 38 years. While CBS and NBC…

On Tuesday, CNN's Jim Acosta asked President Obama about "what some people are calling 'your best week ever.'" Acosta played up that "you had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received." The correspondent then underlined that 'it seems that you've built up some political…