Nine of those happened just since Trump announced his candidacy, including January’s numbers.

AD

Presumably, the Drudge Report was similarly celebratory. Let’s see, thanks to DrudgeReportArchives.com.

July 2015

(The missing image in the screenshot is a function of the archive not capturing it.)

AD

The July 2015 numbers were released the day after the first Republican primary debate, which dominated Drudge’s attention. (Jobs numbers for a month are released the first Friday of the following month, which is why February’s are just out.) The jobs increase — which was below 235,000 before revisions — merited some red-text hand-wringing about the number of Americans not in the labor force. Since the unemployment rate is calculated only against the number of people in the labor force — that is, looking for work or employed — more people out of the labor force can shift the unemployment rate down.

AD

But more over, it seems like a big number of unemployed people: 94 million people out of work, almost! Of course, that includes retirees and people in college and those who have a disability. Anyway, we’ll come back to this number.

October 2015

A celebratory Drudge splash for a 271,000-jobs gain.

November 2015

The jobs numbers came out shortly after the San Bernardino attacks. These numbers also were later revised upward.

December 2015

Similar to October’s splash.

February 2016

By March of last year, 2016 presidential primary voting was underway. The jobs numbers were released after yet another debate, but notice that Drudge leavened the jobs figure with a number about the trade deficit.

June 2016

The June jobs numbers came out after the murders of police officers in Dallas. Drudge still reported the figures — but now included that number not in the labor force alongside the jobs increase. He also put an uptick in the unemployment rate above the topline jobs number.

July 2016

A happy face! And an asterisk.

September 2016

Another emoji for September, but not a smiley one. The unrevised jobs numbers released a month before the election shared space with various critiques of the Clintons and, in red, a worry about the number of people not in the labor force.

In case you were curious, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the number of people not in the labor force right now at 94,190,000 — a bit more than in September.