The
national unemployment rate is currently higher than when President
Barack Obama took office, but he and many others have been making the
case at this week’s Democratic convention that he should get four more
years as president.
But
the convention also falls just days before the August unemployment
report comes out Sept. 7. According to Marketwatch, it is expected to
show only 120,000 jobs added [1], much lower than July’s 163,000. It would also be lower than the jobs needed to break even [2]
in a given month, due to population growth. So it would make sense for
the networks to at least mention unemployment in their evening reports
Sept. 3-5. But only one of the three broadcast networks did that.
CBS
“Evening News” mentioned the 8.3 percent unemployment rate or the
“nearly 13 million” looking for work in four stories during that time
frame, while ABC and NBC never mentioned it those first three nights of
convention week.
More
network stories, five total, mentioned that jobs are being created or
added to the economy including one story in which San Antonio mayor
Julian Castro claimed Obama has created 4.5 million “new jobs” and
argued “that’s more than was created [under 8 years of Bush].” But
Castro’s facts were very flawed.
In
order to get that figure he begins counting in 2010, after the worst
job losses which happened during Obama’s first year in office and is
only counting private sector jobs (which helps mask government job
losses). According to a CNN fact check [3]: "The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category
for the administration. But overall, there are still fewer people
working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession."
[Emphasis added]
Back
in February the Congressional Budget Office announced that this stretch
of unemployment higher than 8 percent is the longest period since the Great Depression [4].
This is still the case in spite of hundreds of billions of dollars
spent on stimulus and the Obama administration’s promises that the rate
would not go above 8 percent if his stimulus plan was passed.
