NY Times Admits Good Economic News

You know it just killed them to do it, and as Ken Shepherd writes here, they didn’t exactly blare the positives the way they did the negatives:

What a difference three days make. 72 little hours.

In that time, a New York Times reporter went from tolling the death knell of real wage growth to reporting a 7-percent wage jump over last year after inflation.

“[T]he current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages,” The New York Times’ David Leonhardt and Steven Greenhouse somberly noted in their page A6 article in the August 28 edition. […]

But new data released on August 30 pushed Leonhardt to admit the death of wage growth he wrote about earlier might be greatly exaggerated.

In an August 31 Business Day section story about new government data on the gross domestic product (GDP), Leonhardt found economists arguing the new report “was a welcome sign at a time of significant uncertainty about the economy’s direction.”

“Perhaps the biggest surprise,” Leonhardt noted, “was new evidence of a surge in wage-and-salary income in the first half of this year,” with pay up “at an annual pace around 7 percent after adjusting for inflation,” according to “an economic consulting firm, MFR.”

A 7% wage jump, after inflation. Wow. I know we can’t blame Bush for it, but we should…he gets blamed for everything else! And certainly there is no question that if wages were down 7% (or even .05%) Bush would be getting blamed and fantasy-lynched by the usual suspects.

Steve Spuiell writes:

The about-face is especially important because it involves wages, upon which liberals have increasingly focused their criticism of the economy.

He also notes that this story has gotten very little attention. Quel surprise!

Happily he links to this Instapundit post which I meant to link to and lost track of. Follow all of Glenn’s very interesting links…and maybe send them around. If the press won’t disseminate information, we certainly should.

Remember when 3% growth and 5.6% unemployment were considered fantastic economic news and a “virtually full employment!” I do. It was back in the 1990’s. Now we have higher growth and lower unemployment…and somehow, it’s all bad news. You’d better start picking out your apple-selling corner, soon.

Betsy links to more, including evidence that the press always reports negative on the economy when a Republican is president, but you knew that, right? If you remember the 1990’s (when a 3%growth quarter was phenomenal and 5.6% unemployment was “essentially full” employment) then you have to know it.

check out the new unemployment rate
4.7%

NY Times admits good economic news