If there’s bad economic news, in this case a sharp increase in weekly initial jobless claims to 472,000, one can count on the likes of Reuters to term it “unexpected”:
Jobless claims unexpectedly higher last week
The number of workers filing new applications for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week as the manufacturing, construction and education sectors shed employees, adding to worries that the economic recovery is slowing.
(Revisions/extensions, 10:05 am 6/17/2010) – Hot Air commenter mankai found that the first version of AP’s story (thanks to Breitbart for not sending the original down the memory hole like everybody else) also used the “unexpectedly” adverb. Also, in the main post, Ed Morrissey noted that, thanks to a revision of the prior week’s claims, this week’s increase wasn’t exactly followed by 3 weeks of drops as the AP would lead one to believe.
Since Ed Morrissey decided to link here, and he has the most-exhaustive list of the press terming bad economic news “unexpected”, let’s count the number of times this year he’s caught the presstitutes using their favorite adverb:
- Reuters describing the May collapse of retail sales
- The AP describing a dip in April’s leading economic indicators.
- The AP describing the 5/9-5/15 initial jobless claim increase.
- The AP describing the 4/4-4/10 initial jobless claim increase.
- The AP describing the 3/28-4/3 initial jobless claim increase.
- The Wall Street Journal describing the private-sector payroll drop in March.
- Bloomberg describing the February new-home sales drop.
- Reuters describing the January existing-home sales drop.
- The AP describing the 2/14-2/20 initial jobless claim increase.
- Reuters describing the January new-home sales drop (this one from Green Room contributor Karl).
- Reuters describing the 2/7-2/13 initial jobless claim increase (again from Karl).
- Reuters describing the drop in consumer confidence in early February.
- The AP describing the drop in January unemployment figures (as Ed noted, “For once, the AP uses its favorite adverb correctly.”)
- The AP describing the 1/24-1/30 initial jobless claim increase.
- Reuters describing a high 4th-quarter 2009 GDP growth (revised downward slightly since then).
- Reuters describing a collapse in December new-home sales.
- The AP using “more dramatically than expected” to describe a collapse in December existing-home sales.
- Reuters describing the 1/17-1/23 initial jobless claim increase.
- CNBC describing a drop in homebuilder sentiment in January.
- The AP describing a drop in new-housing starts in December.
- CNBC describing a drop in retail sales in December.
- The AP using “more than expected”, and Reuters using the U-word to describe the net loss of jobs in December.
- FOX Business describing a drop in November pending home sales.
This is hardly an exhaustive list, but that’s 22 “unexpected” bad-news items, another 2 “unexpected-by-another-phrase” bad-news items, and 2 “unexpected” good-news items. That’s an average of every other week.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Doug Mataconis, Steve Eggleston and deaninwaukesha, Allen Ness. Allen Ness said: RT @steveegg: If "unexpected" economic news happens every other week, is it still "unexpected"? http://bit.ly/aH2gUM @EdMorrissey @Melis … […]
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