WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Did you graduate with a job in hand?

Neither did I. So I may well be one of the “4 in 5 U.S. adults [that] struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least part of their lives,” according to a breathless account by the Associated Press released Monday.

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It’s an account so mendacious in its premise that it will likely do more to damage efforts to eliminate poverty than to draw attention to it. If the media — and being an AP article, it will be in every newspaper tomorrow — really says four out of five people are in “poverty,” than basically no one is, right?

When Mitt Romney qualifies under a poverty definition — neither he nor his wife Ann had a job when they were newlywed college students — then the definition probably needs some tweaking.

The broader point of the article is that, at a certain part of their lives, most Americans face hardships. That’s undeniably true — whether it’s college graduates entering a weak job market, the elderly who often live on Social Security with little other income, or middle-aged workers who find their factory shut and are forced to get a job in the mall.

The recession made those conditions worse, and the recovery since then has been slow.

The real numbers are bad enough: 7.6% unemployment, nearly 12 million unemployed, another 8 million working part-time for economic reasons, 47 million on food stamps.

The AP alludes to those who cycle in and out of poverty, and that’s undeniably higher than the 15% official poverty rate.

It’s also not 80% in any way that can help Americans to better understand the economy and those who have been left behind.

— Steve Goldstein