Steep drop in unemployment rate spawns conspiracy [View all]
Source: Associated Press
Steep drop in unemployment rate spawns conspiracy
CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Published: 24 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sasquatch might as well have traipsed across the White House lawn Friday with a lost Warren Commission file on his way to the studio where NASA staged the moon landing.
Conspiracy theorists came out in force after the government reported a sudden drop in the U.S. unemployment rate one month before Election Day. Their message: The Obama administration would do anything to ensure a November victory, including manipulating unemployment data.
The conspiracy was widely rejected. Officials at the Labor Department said the jobs figures are calculated by highly trained government employees without any political interference. Democrats and even some Republicans said they also found the charges implausible.
Yet that didn't stop the chatter. The allegations were a measure of how politicized the monthly unemployment report has become near the end of a campaign that has focused on the economy and jobs.
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