Ignoring the Lede?

My journalism friends use the term “burying the lede” to refer to an article that puts the most important information deep in the story rather than in the first paragraph or the first sentence of the article.

Vermont’s Public Assets institute goes one step further in its recent jobs brief titled Not all counties have regained the jobs lost during Covid, finding that eight out of Vermont’s 14 counties have fewer jobs in 2024 than in 2019, the year before the Covid pandemic hit.

That is the case, but the bigger story, at least to me, is that the state as a whole still has fewer jobs than it did in 2019. That’s the case for only two other states, Louisiana and Hawaii, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).

Employment nationwide was 4.6% higher in 2024 than in 2019. Vermont is still 2.2% below its 2019 level. The state’s poor job performance is a reflection of the lack of growth in the state’s economy.

Burying the lede is one thing. Ignoring it is another.