The jobless rate is the top story for many news outlets, with a loss in June of 467,000 jobs, according to the New York Times. It's a huge number. It puts the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.5 percent. Our economy has lost 6.5 million jobs since January 2008. No surprise, the announcement sent the stock market lower. The market seems to react to news almost emotionally to almost any negative announcement.
Couldn't news be reported differently so that the market wouldn't be as "depressed" by the numbers? Journalists are taught that the significant is newsworthy. If that's true, than why isn't the number of EMPLOYED people being reported?
Is reporting only the negative a form of bias? I don't want to suggest that we should get only happy news, but how the news is reported makes a difference. Compare FOX News and MSNBC or the New York Times and the Washington Times. They report on the same news (mostly), but treat it differently.
Is reporting the employment rate as well as the unemployment rate an option? Would it make any difference? To people? To the stock market?
More later,
Russ
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