Oil is to Blame for... Rising Global Unemployment

AllAfrica.com, a Washington-based news-aggregate site with a focus on the African continent, links to this story originally published by the Vanguard in Lagos. The article takes its information from a press release made by the International Labour Office(ILO)'s annual report on Global Employment Trends.
The headline of the article: Nigeria: Rising Oil Prices to Render 5m Unemployed, ILO Warns
The lede for the press release:

Economic turbulence largely due to credit market turmoil and rising oil prices could spur an increase in global unemployment by an estimated 5 million persons in 2008, the International Labour Office said today in its annual Global Employment Trends (GET) report.

Despite making the lede, surprisingly oil is not mentioned again in the article or press release. Turning to the actual report, we find:

For the first time, probably, turbulences in one economically strong region (namely, the Developed Economies & the EU region and upfront the United States as a result of higher oil prices and the US housing market turmoil) have, so far, not impacted on other regions. (emphasis mine)

Put simply, the press release and all subsequent articles written on the GET report fingered rising oil prices as a culprit for rising unemployment across the globe, when what the report actually claims is the rising oil prices have not had the anticipated effect on unemployment, and indeed that more people are employed than ever before.

It is rather incredible that the press release for the report would be so misleading, but a headline blaming unemployment on rising oil prices probably makes intuitive sense to a public that has been fed Big Bad Oil stories for years. As discussed in Robert Entman's Projections of Power, news that fits into an accepted schema is highly unlikely to be contested. A brief search online concludes that the press release was noted but not analyzed.

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