The weak jobs report released Friday has The Washington Post’s Jim Tankersley wondering if porn is to blame.
“Is pornography killing the economy?” Tankersley asks in a Friday Wonkblog post.
Tankersley points to the 22,000 jobs lost in the motion picture business last month. That amounts to about 6 percent of the industry’s workforce, which might have contributed to making “a disappointing August jobs report look even worse.”
According to the Post analyst, the drop in motion picture industry jobs coincides with a temporary August shutdown of the porn industry, which came after an actress tested positive for HIV.
“The Labor Department collects employer data in the ‘pay period including the 12th (of the month), which may or may not correspond directly to the calendar week,’” Tankersley writes. “Last month, the period that includes the 12th ran through the 24th. That means the shutdown was happening while the government was pulling its numbers together.”
