September 7, 2018

A Little Note About Reporting on the Economy

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As writeups begin to appear about the August jobs report, I’ve noticed a fair number of people describing it as “strong.” I wish reporters would stop doing this when the BLS announces fairly ordinary numbers like the 201,000 new jobs we got last month.¹ This isn’t terrible or anything, but jobs have been growing at about this rate for so long that it seems as if we’ve finally all been socialized to think of anything over 200,000 or so as strong. But it’s really not. If I had my druthers, the starting point for “strong” would be 300,000 new jobs—and we’ve hit that number only five times in the past five years.

So let’s not get carried away. Donald Trump will probably describe this as the greatest jobs report ever, but the rest of us should stick to more judicious descriptions. 200,000 new jobs is fairly good, but that’s it. We can do better, and we should.

¹They should especially knock it off when the labor force shrinks and the number of people working drops by 423,000. That just isn’t a great jobs report.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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