Fox News Crying on the Inside While Reporting the January Jobs Numbers

I am not an economist, but I am having a hard time finding the bad news in the January jobs report. The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs this month, which was considerably more than the 190,000 jobs predicted ahead of the report. It has driven the unemployment rate down to its lowest level since 1969.

The news is great apparently for everyone, except Wall Street (stocks are down this morning because Wall Street hates jobs!) and Fox News, where Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade announce the new numbers as though trying to compliment the chef for his delicious shit pie.

it's time for my favorite morning pastime — watching Fox News pretend to be enthused about strong jobs reports under President Biden pic.twitter.com/vkY24ryoHa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 3, 2023

I’m not suggesting that a recession won’t come, but how many more months must we fear a “looming recession”? We’ve seen two of the strongest years of job growth in the history of the country, we’ve managed to survive what appears to be the worst of inflation, and — according to Kai Ryssdal yesterday — even mortgage rates are falling again.

And yet, tech and media do continue to lay off employees. While the economy added over 500,000 jobs, the tech industry shed 100,000 jobs in January. Why is that? The Los Angeles Times suggests — rightly, I think — that tech companies yes, may have overhired post-pandemic, but also, they may also be trying to bring employees to heel. When employees start to gain leverage, this is what you do: You strike the fear of God into them. No one is going to ask for a raise or more vacation time if the company is laying off workers, and it’s no time to start unionizing when there are widespread terminations, right?

A lot of it, of course, is just the need for consistent year-over-year growth, which is insane to me because 1) it’s impossible, and 2) honestly, why do companies value shareholders more than employees? They care more about an Austin day trader named Chuck than they care about Linda, who has been working for the company for 20 years. Twenty years of cost of living increases add up, so it’s time to cut 10,000 senior employees and replace them with cheaper, younger employees, and maybe even a little AI.

I made this joke on Twitter earlier this week, but it’s also true. We’re a (very) small company, but we use the same programmatic ads as the rest of the media and from what we’ve seen, ad rates are OK. They’re not rising, but we can figure out how to make it work with the existing rates. Revenue is flat, and that’s good! We will take it! If we made it work last year, we can make it work this year! We’re certainly not going to reduce expenses so that I can afford a Napoleon hat.

Revenue for https://t.co/p6n3jBaHK4 was flat this January compared to the last, and we've made the difficult decision not to lay off anyone or reduce expenses because eking by from one month to the next and knocking on wood has been a barely successful strategy for 19 years!

— pajiba (@pajiba) February 1, 2023

Business is business, and I get it. If someone is costing more than you spend on them, that’s fair, but ultimately, people are more important than profits. Or at least they should be.

The point is: The economy is hanging in there. I’m glad the country continues to add jobs and that the unemployment rate continues to fall. But also: Media companies need to chill with the layoffs, and stop using the “threat of a looming recession” as an excuse to motivate employees through fear.

(Just a general knock on wood for the entire post above.)