Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Bloomberg Hides Blue v. Red State Economic Disparity

So check out this headline:
"Tight Job Market in U.S. Cities Prompts Higher Pay"
Sounds awesome right?  So, if you are a struggling millenial in New York, Chicago, LA or Boston, this is good news, right?

Maybe not.  If you read the article, it's basically about Texas and maybe a few other states like North Dakota and Louisiana.  Savvy readers will note that these are energy states.  So the article is basically saying that oil states are booming, but the title says "cities."  And the cities argument is a little thin...
Forty-nine, or 13 percent, of the 372 metro areas reported jobless rates below 5 percent that month, the most for February since 2008, two months after the start of the recession. The lowest was 2.8 percent in Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, Louisiana, because of offshore-oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
13%?  Houma, LA?  Finally, Bloomberg helpfully gives us a map.  The map is hardly heartening to "city" folk.  It shows, broadly, California and Illinois are still disasters, the northeast is meh and places like super-cool and super blue urban Oregon are struggling big time. 

Contrast that with the soutwest (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri) and the deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina). 

On the evidence, the reality is clear and the story ought to be "Blue state are struggling, Red states doing much better."  Nope, just "cities" are doing better.

Do we think this is a typical example of micro-bias at Al Hunt's Bloomberg News to give struggling millenials hope and to try to convince people that Obamanomics is turning the corner?

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