The most common error in business journalism

I read a lot of business journalism every day. It’s my job, and I love my job.

So I can say with some degree of expertise that the error in the headline on Jack Shafer‘s column about the brouhaha over the Bureau of Labor Statistics is one that I see a LOT.

Maybe not every day. But every other day? Yes.

A drop in the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent is not a drop of 0.3 percent. It is a drop of 0.3 percentage points, which is how Shafer refers to the change in his column. Percent-wise, it is a 3.7 percent drop.

Too many business journalists don’t know the difference between a percentage point change and a percent change.

For shame, Reuters headline writer.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.