In a PBS interview June 2, Vice President Joseph Biden predicted 700,000 to 1.4 million jobs would be created by the end of 2010. But at most, that would still be more than 5.2 million jobs shy of matching President Obama’s claims about economic stimulus.
Biden forecast job creation “between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs on average all the way through this year” in an interview with Charlie Rose. He also predicted “trouble in paradise [1]” for the GOP.
Left-wing website The Huffington Post reported the prediction calling it “fairly safe” by “recent trends.” Sam Stein wrote that, “Biden would not, however, mark a date when he thought the unemployment rate would dip to, say, six percent.”
Stein didn’t remind readers that Obama said the stimulus package would create more than 4 million jobs [2] by the end of 2010. Once you take out temporary jobs and the 100,000 minimum needed every month to keep up with population growth, the economy would need to create 932,000 new permanent jobs each and every month through the end of 2010.
The Obama administration actually needs to create a grand total of 6,662,000 jobs by the end of the year to fulfill his pledge because over 2.6 million jobs have been lost under his presidency.
The May 7 jobs report of 290,000 new jobs (66,000 temporary) was praised by the mainstream news media. The Associated Press emphasized the good news in its subhead and lead sentence: “Jobs grow by most in 4 years,” and described people streaming “back in to the market looking for work.”
AP waited until the eighth paragraph to mention that “all told, 15.3 million people were out of work in April.”
Under previous administrations (Bush, Reagan) good jobs news was spun negatively. But since Obama took office, many news stories have given him a pass on the employment issue despite his grandiose promises to create millions of jobs.
The Business & Media Institute found that network news reports were extremely negative during President Reagan’s administration, when unemployment was often at the same rate [3] as it was in 2009 during Obama’s first year. The networks found “good” news for Obama; however, focusing stories on as few as 25 jobs “saved” by the stimulus package.
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