When the unemployment figures were reported at 8:30 AM on Friday, the pundits and audience of Morning Joe eagerly awaited them.
As soon as Republican Joe Scarborough read that the drop from 8.1% to 7.8% in the unemployment rate included information that new jobs had increased by only 114,000, he seized on what he considered “the math” and concluded that this meant that a huge number of people had dropped out of the job market.
In his rush to judgment, Scarborough did not take a moment to read the report and learn that 82,000 additonal jobs had been overlooked in the past two months and had now been added, as part of the routine adjustments. (Sometimes the adjustments go in the other direction.)
Hopefully Scarborugh will express some remorse tomorrow.
The only numbers that matter is total employment with the correlation to declining poverty and declining food stamp enrollment. This is classic lipstick on a pig.