MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was astonished by a detailed analysis of the economic pain suffered by many American workers — but not all of them.
“Morning Joe” contributor Steve Rattner, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, brought charts to fact check claims by President Donald Trump and his advisers about the recovery since the coronavirus pandemic destroyed the U.S. economy.
“The pace of job recovery is actually slowing fairly dramatically,” Rattner said. “One other small point, the 8.4 percent unemployment rate is really 9.1 percent — the Department of Labor said there was a misclassification error, so that number isn’t as good either. Let’s turn to this question whether we’re dealing with a broad-based recovery of jobs or something more narrow. What you can see on the next chart are the disparities in how different Americans have fared. This is because the pandemic or the economic crisis didn’t hit every industry equally, travel, recreation, restaurants, so on, where people of color, lower income, women work and it was hit disproportionately hard.”