VIEWPOINT | The jobs aren’t all right

Column by Erick Erickson

The government, for the past year, has overstated joblessness by 818,000 jobs. That revision comes on top of the monthly revisions already made. It is probably not a conspiracy to help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris look good or they would have waited until after the election, not before early voting, to announce the revision. But it is troubling that the government data was off by so much and equally as troubling that politicians and the press together have lectured Americans that the public did not know what they knew.

Last week, former CNN host Don Lemon went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to interview people on the boardwalk about the election. One man said he made more money under Donald Trump. Lemon proceeded to tell the man he was wrong because “the data” show Americans are doing better now. Lemon behaved like much of the press and so many Democratic politicians.

If you tell the press you are worse off now than you were four years ago, the press claim you have been spun into believing lies. But the lie was that the economy and job creation were far better than they were. Americans knew. The experts got it wrong and the press enforced groupthink by the expert class. Where once an American’s lived experience had to be accurately captured by the press, when that experience conflicts with the popular narrative, the narrative must prevail over the truth.

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