Cheerleading for Labour with half-truths

Ex Labour MP Chris Carter, as part of Heather Du Plessis-Allan's political panel, insists that things just aren't as bad as people think.

He keeps saying "9,000 new jobs were created in August."

I had a look at Statistics NZ for the source.

Filled jobs were up 9,147 to 2.2 million in August 2020 compared with July. While the number of filled jobs in most industries remained similar to last month’s, for education and training it was up 7,409.

Much of the first half of the school and academic year was hampered by COVID-19, and it may be that filled jobs were down because of this, particularly for jobs outside of core teaching staff.  

Filled job numbers are usually lower in August than in March by a few thousand, but this year the difference was over 30,000 jobs.

'30,000 fewer jobs' doesn't sound as good as '9,000 new jobs.'