Dear Editor,
Everyone is pleased the May unemployment rate dropped to 13.3 percent from 14.7. But no one was more pleased than the President who crowed, “There’s a great thing that’s happening for our country.” Not to be outdone by his own rhetoric, he concluded his June 5th presser with, “Today is probably, if you think of it, the greatest comeback in American history.”
Nevermind that 30 million people are still unemployed, and Black and Asian American unemployment actually rose.
I don’t trust Trump’s celebratory numbers.
Remember when Florida’s Governor DeSantis announced on May 20th that a Department of Health data analyst was fired for insubordination? In fact, she refused orders to manipulate the database that keeps track of epidemiological data. She refused to make it say Florida was safe to reopen business when the underlying data didn’t support that conclusion. She had the professional ethics and moral strength to say “no,” although it cost her job. Do those who feed us good employment news from the White House have as much integrity?
The Labor Department has said, due to limitations in data gathering (many unemployed people are misclassified as being employed), the true unemployment rate could be three percent higher than currently estimated.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont, Calif.
Bruce:
We share your essential mistrust of any message emanating from this administration. We had missed, though, the Labor Department’s candid caveat. Thank you.
The Editor