Republicans’ unemployment chutzpah: Desperate party tries to capitalize on workforce damage it wrou
First, Boehner and co. blocked unemployment insurance from being extended. Now? They're oh-so sad about its results
Jobs Report Day is great fun. The first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its employment survey from the previous month, and partisans from both sides of the aisle sit around it picking out their favorite morsels of data while studiously ignoring the numbers that undermine their preferred economic narrative.
The April jobs report featured a couple of snazzy topline numbers 288,000 jobs created and an unemployment rate that dropped from 6.7 to 6.3 percent. It also had some worrying figures, most notably a decline in the civilian labor force of 806,000 and a 0.4 percent drop in the labor force participation rate. Take it all together and you have reason to smile while tugging at your collar.
If you peruse the responses from top-level Republicans, you quickly see a pattern emerge: Yeah yeah more jobs whatever but LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE LEAVING THE WORKFORCE!!!
Snip
The data are, of course, all preliminary and subject to later revision, as is the case with every jobs report. But on balance it looks like the GOP-led effort to block the unemployment extension has done more harm than good, and now theyre trying to make political hay out of it.
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/republicans_unemployment_chutzpah_desperate_party_tries_to_capitalize_on_workforce_damage_it_wrought/