Fox News compared the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prediction of job losses due to sequestration to recent job growth reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), falsely suggesting that the across-the-board cuts have had no negative effects on job creation.

On the August 23 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto was joined by Fox News contributor Mike Huckabee to address the impacts of across-the-board budget cuts commonly known as sequestration. In response to recent comments made by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the damaging effects of sequestration on the economy, Cavuto claimed, “I think he just made that up.”

Cavuto then attempted to bolster his claim with a misleading graphic, which suggested that continued job growth since the onset of sequestration proves that the budget cuts had no real economic effect.

In fact, the best CBO estimates of the effects of sequestration through the 2013 calendar year predicted slower economic growth and fewer jobs created. Cavuto's graphic correctly listed the number of new jobs created during the first six months of sequestration but incorrectly compared that with the CBO's estimate that 750,000 fewer full-time jobs would be created under sequestration. The two jobs figures are entirely unrelated. According to the CBO report cited by Cavuto (emphasis added):

In the absence of sequestration, CBO estimates, GDP growth would be about 0.6 percentage points faster during this calendar year, and the equivalent of about 750,000 more full-time jobs would be created or retained by the fourth quarter.

Contrary to what Cavuto claimed, the CBO did not predict that the economy would experience a net loss in jobs, rather that sequestration would result in fewer jobs being created. An accurate presentation of the data would make it clear that while jobs growth has been present, absent budget cuts it would be much greater.

While the discussion between Cavuto and Huckabee attempted to downplay the effects of sequestration, cuts are being continuously rolled out, affecting a number of crucial government programs. Unless policy is changed through new legislation, such across-the-board budget cuts will be scheduled every year for the next decade, further weakening ecnomic growth.