Not everyone in the news media cheered on the November jobs report. Fox Business Network (FBN) anchor Stuart Varney criticized the report’s numbers on Dec. 2.
“178,000 new jobs created. Let’s call that a weak report,” he said on Varney & Company.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that day, that the economy added 178,000 jobs in November and that the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent. That was the lowest rate since 2007 before the Great Recession, but helped by near record numbers of people out of the labor force.
“Most of them, 118,000 jobs created, were part-time jobs,” he said. FBN Overseas Markets Editor Ashley Webster added that most of those part-time jobs were seasonal and would disappear in the new year.
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Webster criticized the weakness of the Obama recovery, arguing that the country was seven years into a recovery and the labor force participation rate continued its decline. CNS News reported on Dec. 2, that the number of people outside of the labor force, or people who gave up looking for a job, hovered near a record high at 95,055,000.
Even the liberal New York Times downplayed the November jobs report and indicated labor force participation rates contributed more to the lower unemployment rate than job creation.
“For all the arguments about the health of the economy during the presidential race, this latest snapshot of American workers does not radically shift the outlook one way or the other,” Times reporter Patricia Cohen said.
Cohen interviewed Deputy Chief Economist for PNC Gus Faucher who said the drop “came more from a decline in the labor force, more than an increase in household employment.”
