Clinton's claim on tripled unemployment rate called 'misleading' by far-right outlet, OECD data hints he's right
Former president Bill Clinton slammed incumbent president Donald Trump during his brief speech at the Democratic National Convention 2020 and was particularly critical of his role in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The 74-year-old not only accused the administration of ignoring the experts’ opinions when it came to dealing with the pandemic, but he also slammed the administration over the economic repercussions.
In his speech, Clinton said: “Our unemployment rate is more than twice as high as South Korea’s, two-and-a-half times the United Kingdom’s, more than three times Japan’s. Donald Trump says we’re leading the world — well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate tripled,” adding that in times of Trump, the Oval Office has become a storm center where chaos prevails. Clinton’s claim has received contradictory responses.
Unemployment rate due to other reasons: Breitbart
According to the far-right website Breitbart News, the Democrat’s claim is "highly misleading." In a report, it said even if it was true that the unemployment rate in the US jumped higher than those of its European and Asian allies, it was more because it chose “a more flexible and generally more effective economic policy response than Europe, South Korea has an export-focused economy, and Japan’s shrinking population and societal conventions all but prohibit layoffs.” The report said it was not right to say that the unemployment rate in the US became high because of the alleged failure of the Trump administration’s policies or to imply that the American economy is weaker than either those of the UK, Japan, or South Korea.
“The U.K., like many other European nations, has relied on a job protection scheme that has kept workers formally attached to their jobs even though many are not actually working or businesses cannot afford to keep them on. The U.S., for its part, engaged in a massive fiscal expansion that has swiftly ended the economic contraction caused by the coronavirus. That included allowing workers to be laid off but paying most of those workers more in unemployment benefits than they earned on the job. That has limited the damage to the U.S. economy, kept household consumer spending afloat, and allowed many Americans who lost their jobs to keep paying their bills,” the Breitbart report said.
Explaining how the economies of Europe, Japan, and South Korea are doing, the report cited data that the eurozone’s gross domestic product went down by 40.3 percent on an annual basis, more than the around 33 percent contraction the US economy witnessed in the same period. It said Japan continues to be deeply buried in a recession while acknowledging that South Korea did better “largely because the structure of its economy means it is much less dependent on the spending of its own consumers and therefore less vulnerable to social distancing drags”.
The report also cited a Wall Street Journal piece penned by Greg Ip that explains the difference between the US and Europe, saying, “But in managing the economic fallout, the U.S. is the exemplar. Its economy probably shrank 10% in the first half of the year, according to J.P. Morgan, about half as much as Spain, Italy and France and less even than Germany, which has been relatively unscathed by the virus. Less stringent and shorter lockdowns and less dependence on tourism and trade explain some of this outperformance, but policy actions are also key. Congress and the Trump administration have passed spending and tax measures exceeding 12% of gross domestic product, among the highest of advanced countries, according to the International Monetary Fund.”
Clinton is right, says PolitiFact
But there are also others who felt Clinton was not too wrong. PolitiFact, a non-profit project operated by Florida-based Poynter Institute, said in a report, “Using the most clear-cut multi-nation comparison — comparing January to June 2020 — Clinton is right.” PolitiFact took data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which comprises members from advanced industrialized nations and collects statistics on unemployment rates as well. Data for 20 nations were collected, including a number of West European nations, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Israel.
The data from January to June were compared and the analysis showed that the US was among the few nations (besides Canada) that showed a dramatic increase in the unemployment rate in the first six months of 2020. The US saw its unemployment rate going up from 3.6 percent to 11.1 percent, which means a little under 3.1 times higher in June than in January, the PolitiFact report added.