Half full. Half empty.

Economic news lately has sounded fairly good. Little improvements here and there haven't always been better than expected, but they show slow growth, avoiding another recession. Despite all of this, people are very pessimistic. The media can reflect this pessimism. I noticed in particular, this article from Bloomberg.

This is a perfect Half Full/Half Empty problem. The headline of the article states that payrolls declined in 25 states. Well, we have 50 of them, so that leaves 25 states where payrolls didn't decline. Exactly half of the story is good news, exactly half is bad news. In fact, it only takes the second paragraph to note that the jobless rate decreased in 25 states.

Classic pessimism for completely neutral news. Otherwise, most news has been positive!