Fox News personalities are having a hard time trying to explain the January Jobs Report to their viewers after gleefully predicting “massive job loses” hours the report was released.
On Friday morning, Fox And Friends opened with a graphic reading “300,000 job loss” in January. They followed with a chyron reporting “January Jobs report predicted to be worst in years.”
“So, Peter, how does the White House good I put a happy face on that?” host Peter Doocy asked White House correspondent Peter Doocy.
“He’ll say this is just proof that people need to get vaccinated, and he’ll say that they’d still created more jobs in a year than any president ever,” The younger Doocy replied. “But this is an extraordinary time because of COVID and they want to just and you know what he’ll probably also if it goes the way that the last few of these things have gone, I push for the bill back better plan because they use that as a catch all it’s going to create jobs that’s going to lower unemployment.”
“So Peter, what vaccine do you get for jobless?” Steve Doocy quipped.
“I have a great idea for President Biden,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said. “if y’all give me a second to get a pen, or you guys, uh, why don’t you end the pandemic? Denmark did it, so did the UK and Sweden. It’s over.”
Moments later, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US added 467,000 new jobs in January, beating the expectations.
Unable to put a bad spin on the strong report, Steve Doocy invited Fox business host Stuart Varney to explain it.
“You know, this morning we were projecting what one estimate was 150,000 Or could have been 300,000 in the hole. It’s close to half a million. How did everybody get this so wrong?” Doocy asked.
“Well, you’re right. Everybody did get this chronically wrong. I’m not sure I can really explain why we’ve got this explosion are 467,000 jobs because it does run counter to what we were expecting. We thought that COVID Or Omicron, in particular, will be keeping millions of people at home,” Varney said before explaining why the unemployment rate went up despite the good numbers.
“The unemployment rate went up from 3.9 to 4%. That’s because if you were home with Omicron and you’re an hourly worker, you didn’t get your paycheck. You’re classed as an employee. That’s why the unemployment rate went up.”
Check the evolution of Fox News reporting on the Job numbers below.
This is the graphic that opened Friday's edition of Fox & Friends. Oops. pic.twitter.com/KgRjC35VYb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 4, 2022
"What vaccine do you get for job loss?" — Fox & Friends a couple hours before a jobs report showing an addition of 467,000 jobs in January was released pic.twitter.com/6odomIDuai
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 4, 2022
"How did everybody get this so wrong?!" — Steve Doocy reacts to the strong jobs report about two hours after he joked about how it might show 300,000 jobs lost pic.twitter.com/MeDyHk2Prj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 4, 2022
