What happened: U.S. employers added more than half a million jobs last month, highlighting what the New York Times called the labor market's "extraordinary vibrancy" at a time when technology firms and media companies are laying off thousands of employees.
Why it matters: The robust job growth suggests that when it comes to the American economy, most journalists are superfluous chaff. The market has spoken: Fewer journalists means more jobs for actual workers.
Background: The Washington Post, a Jeff Bezos-owned publication, has fired dozens of journalists since November. The paper's employee union denounced the layoffs as "unacceptable" during a "time of continued growth and expansion." (Fact check: The Post lost half a million subscribers since President Joe Biden took office, a decline of roughly 20 percent.)
Lots of media outlets are struggling to survive in the post-Donald Trump era. Mainstream journalists and their target readers simply don't care when it comes to holding a Democratic president accountable. CNN fired hundreds of staffers in December; Vox Media did the same in January, citing the poor "economic climate."
Friday's jobs report suggests the economic climate is actually pretty good for real companies hiring real workers to do real jobs.
Bottom line: In 2017, then-president Trump predicted that mainstream media outlets "will tank if I'm not there." He was right.
