In order to boster the idea that President Trump really is making America great again through the dying industry of coal, EPA President Scott Pruitt was caught lying about the number of coal jobs that have been created since Trump came into office.
In three separate interviews conducted on Sunday, EPA Administrator Pruitt claimed that in the last economic quarter, the U.S. had created a whopping 50,000 jobs in the coal sector.
“Since the fourth quarter of last year until most recently, we’ve added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.”
The problem with that lofty claim is that it was not only an exaggeration of the truth but a big, fat lie. The reality is that since Trump took office, the U.S. has added approximately 1,000 jobs in the coal industry. Since the 4th quarter that Pruitt repeatedly refers to? 1,400 jobs.
“No data exists from government or industry sources to back up the claim that the industry has seen such a dramatic surge in coal mining jobs over this time period. In fact, the average number of coal mining jobs increased by only 586, or about 1.1 percent during the first three months of 2017, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence, citing data from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.”
Pruitt’s lie is even more preposterous when you note that in the entirety of the United States, there are currently only about 51,000 coal jobs in total. That number comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If we were to believe Pruitt’s repeated claim, we would be seeing a complete doubling in the number of coal jobs in the U.S.
Pruitt couldn’t even keep his lie straight, waffling back and forth by claiming that the U.S. had added “almost 50,000 jobs,” and then later that they had added “over 50,000 jobs.”
The sad reality is that President Trump’s promise to bring back coal jobs is an attempt at putting a dead industry on life support. How long will we continue this charade of propping up a failing industry like a bad reboot of “Weekend at Bernie’s”? Once the last piece of coal has been harvested, will we still insist on employing still more miners to search for more?
Either way, allowing our EPA chief to outright lie about the status of the coal industry in America is misleading and dangerous. It may do Pruitt well to research the growing industries in alternative energy – of course, that would require him to actually open his eyes.
