Limbaugh Pushes False Claim That McDonald's Hiring Day Contributed To Strong April Jobs Report

The April jobs report came out today and showed that “nonfarm payroll employment” is up 244,000 for the month of April (significantly higher than had been forecast), while unemployment rose to nine percent. As soon as the jobs report came out, the right-wing media began to find a way to say why this wasn't good news. Conservative media figures soon began to speculate that a major aspect of the job growth was a result of McDonald's and their recently announced plan to hire 50,000 workers nationwide beginning on April 19.

Rush Limbaugh jumped on this theory on his radio show today. He claimed that “62,000 of the jobs ... of the 244 [thousand] were McDonald's” and complained that these such jobs were “previously impugned” as “hamburger flipper jobs” during the Bush administration.

However, the reality is that none of the new jobs announced by McDonald's were included in the April jobs report. Eric Green of TD Securities told The Wall Street Journal in a piece posted before Limbaugh went on the air:

There is no McDonald effect in the report today...The publicized job hiring day was April 19th, one week after the April survey period. We don't know how many of these hires have begun or will begin work or when.

The fact that Limbaugh is willing to forward such a falsehood without making any attempt to verify its veracity is not surprising. His quest to discredit President Obama will continue as long as Obama is in office, and he will attempt to do so at all cost, no matter how fictitious his talking points are.