Jack Welch's Unretirement

On Oct. 11, Jack Welch took the stage before a standing-room-only crowd at the North Ridge Country Club in Raleigh, N.C., and doubled down. “In order for the employment numbers to be where they were said to be, the economy would have to be operating at breakneck speed,” Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric, said in defense of his widely derided Twitter message alluding to a partisan bias in a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The previous week he’d written: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.” Welch looked out at the 400 executives attending the North Carolina CEO Forum. “Do you think the economy is operating at breakneck speed? All I’m trying to do is show this number is nonsense!”

“These people,” he went on, referring to the workers who conduct the employment survey, “they may have a soul Christ would be happy with, but do you really think they’re Romney supporters? Everyone has bias, and that influences what you do.”