July 05, 2013
On a day when most analysts were touting the 195,000 new jobs reported for June as better than expected, the Washington Post warned that things are about to take a sharp turn for the worse. It told readers:
“In addition, an index compiled by Gallup showed that job creation the past two months has been at the highest level since April 2008.”
Of course April 2008 was after the recession had already begun and the economy was losing jobs. The Labor Department reported a loss of 215,000 jobs in April and a loss of 649,000 for the three months from February to May of 2008. While the Post piece writes up the comparison to April of 2008 as positive, in fact it is a pretty awful story.
Hopefully this is just another case of folks getting their numbers seriously messed up (a pretty common occurrence in economic analysis), not an actual survey suggesting the economy is heading into another recession.
Note: It appears the Washington Post has taken down the original article. I guess that means we do not have to fear the survey results it initially reported.
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