CNN's Ali Velshi falsely claimed Feb. unemployment rate dropped to "a historic low"

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200703090007

In a March 9 report on the recently released unemployment rate by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi falsely claimed that "{t}he unemployment rate has dropped in the United States to a historic low of 4.5 percent." In fact, not only is the unemployment rate not at a "historic low," but the current 4.5 percent rate is still higher than when President Bush took office in January 2001. At that time, the rate was 4.2 percent, as Media Matters for America has documented. In its December 2000 report, the BLS further reported that "he jobless rate had ranged from 3.9 to 4.1 percent since October 1999."

This is not the first time Velshi has overstated the historical significance of certain economic indicators. On October 19, 2006, he reported that the Dow Jones industrial average had been setting "record after record after record," but failed to adjust for inflation, which would have shown that the Dow was well below its peak set in January 2000, as Media Matters noted.

[theoldman]

1. It all depends on how you count.

This is why people say that statistics are very inaccurate. Statistics are worse than polls because the statistics are slanted to favor a political party.