Are We Missing the Obvious?

Can an obvious story still be newsworthy? Since I have no formal training in journalism, I suppose I am not qualified to answer that question.  Yet as I stumble across too many conversations where all parties accept that the economy is in terrible shape, an answer forms in my mind nonetheless:  perhaps what is obvious is news after all.

Of course, when someone tells you something is obvious, it usually means he or she is too lazy to make a case in its behalf.  Certainly the recovery in the U.S. economy is obvious to those of us who make a daily diet of the statistics which detail its performance.  And, lately, the recovery in the Indiana economy is becoming apparent as well.  What are we seeing that makes us say this?

Let’s start with the most comprehensive data available on our economic activity – output and employment.  The Bureau of Economic Analysis just released revised estimates of first quarter growth in Gross Domestic Product for the U.S. economy, and they show output growth to be even higher than originally thought.  The 4.4 percent growth rate in GDP for the first three months of 2004 reflects healthy profits, continued strong 

consumer spending, and high investment activity.

And 2004 has thus far been a good year for job growth as well.  In the first four months of this year the national economy has added 867,000 payroll jobs, with the unemployment rate resting at 5.6 percent in April.

And the U.S. economy didn’t just recently get off the sickbed, either.  While job growth was slow in coming around, the overall growth rate in the economy has been positive for ten consecutive quarters.  Consumer spending, which accounts for three quarters of the entire economy, never failed to grow, even in the teeth of the recession.

But is this news relevant for those of us in Indiana ?  After all, our economy is only a two percent slice of the national economic pie, so what meaning does the news of growth in other states have for us? 

The answer is again obvious.  Whoops, I’m getting lazy again.  I should say that since buying and selling products and services to the rest of the economy is the way we make our living, the story of economic resurgence in the national economy is a good news story for

Indiana as well.  It is especially heartening to see the strong pickup in industrial activity, and in investment, both of which are strongly tied of our own state’s prosperity as well.

And the first quarter of 2004 produced the strongest job growth we’ve seen in the state economy since before the recession of 2001 began.

There are plenty of reasons why some might be missing this story, I suppose.  Some of us don’t like numbers, and accounts of economic performance have plenty of those.  Some think the economy moves in lock step with the stock market, or even gasoline prices, which it most certainly does not.  And, of course, in a political season the decision of what is news becomes political as well.

I doubt that the high priests of journalism are going to toss out their old ways and start putting graphs of GDP growth on the front page anytime soon.  But I would say to them that if the people who read and listen to the news come to the conclusion that the economy is still plunging downhill, then they are not doing an acceptable job of keeping us informed.  And if that requires stating the obvious, then so be it.

Patrick M. Barkey