| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #165 11/20/2020 |
| 1) Media Again Distorts Good News on the Trump Economy Into Bad News Here is the lead in the Wall Street Journal news story of a supposed surge of unemployment claims released on Thursday: “The number of applications for unemployment benefits rose sharply last week, indicating continued challenges for the U.S. economic recovery…” The NY Times and Wash Post pretty much had the exact spin on the jobs report. Now please look at the chart below.  Initial claims for jobless benefits did rise by 31,000 to 742,000 – as a result of lockdowns. But does that look like a “sharp rise” in claims? More remarkable, the media buried the lead, which was the very GOOD news on jobs. The total number of people collecting unemployment benefits FELL by more than 400,000.  This is simple math folks: if the number of people collecting first time unemployment benefits is lower than the number of people who have stopped collecting benefits, then unemployment is FALLNG it isn’t rising. DUH! In a nutshell, in May we had just shy of 25 million Americans collecting unemployment – in no small part because Speaker Pelosi insisted on paying people an extra $600 a week benefits on top of normal payments. Now we are down to 6.4 million collecting benefits. There are other programs people can sign up for, but this 19.5 million reduction of unemployed is truly astounding and further evidence that we are experiencing the swiftest recovery from a deep recession probably ever in American history. The only thing that could upset this apple cart would be if Democratic governors started shutting down businesses again. Oh yeah, they are doing that. |
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