By the numbers: Trump reads economic boom into jobs data
CHICAGO (AP) — President Donald Trump has always been a big numbers guy.
He’s proved adept at taking even the grimmest numbers and giving himself a pat on the back or relying on a creative use of data to make himself look good. But his declaration that an unexpected dip in the unemployment rate marked probably “the greatest comeback in American history” was a remarkable level of hyperbole even for him.
“This is a particularly clear example of his lack of cognitive complexity,” said Brian Ott, incoming director of the communication school at Missouri State University and author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”
The Labor Department's repor t on Friday that 2.5 million Americans were added to payrolls in May was clearly good news. In advance, economists had been projecting the loss of 8.3 million jobs, continuing the economic bloodletting caused by the coronavirus pandemic that has spurred the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression.
But economists say the notion that the coronavirus-battered economy is now on a glide path to recovery glosses over some of the hard truths that American workers will face for months, if not years.
Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist, notes that coronavirus pushed the economy into a massive hole and that it remains in a bad place.
“This month’s rise in non-farm payrolls of +2.5 million is (easily!) the largest monthly rise ever recorded,” Wolfers tweeted. “But it’s still only one-eighth of last month’s monstrous decline of -20.7 million. (Also a record.)”
The president’s premature claim to economic victory reflects an artful relationship with numbers that Trump has long displayed.
Trump has repeatedly responded to the still-rising...
