Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Employment ... Or Lack Thereof
The Unemployment Report came out today. The estimates by the "experts" was for 250,000 new jobs. Everyone I read was betting "under". That's never a bad bet during the Bush economic boom, and it again proved to be a winner:
WASHINGTON - Employers stepped up hiring in January, boosting payrolls by 193,000 and lowering the nation's unemployment rate to 4.7 percent, the lowest since July 2001.

The fresh snapshot of the jobs climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, suggested that the economy started the new year on fairly good footing.

Although the 193,000 gain in payroll jobs in January fell short of the 250,000 new jobs that economists said to anticipate before the release of the report, it still marked a sturdy showing and was the biggest increase in jobs since November.
Sturdy showing, eh? From the headline, you'd think that happy times are here again. AP has swallowed the GOP's spin all along as have most media outlets. The truth is that it takes somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth. The fact that the unemployment rate went "down" is due to the fact that people, primarily in the under 20 age group, are dropping out of the job market ... giving up.

Here's a handy dandy chart to give you an idea of just how swell Bush has done in the employment sphere:


Image Via The Big Picture

The link above also has a number of other charts showing the participation rate and other data for analysis if you care to look. The pink line in the above chart is Bush while the other is the average of all recoveries. Above the zero line is job creation, below is job loss. Fact is, Bush has barely created "net" new jobs during his administration.

But then again, yacht builders can only employee so many workers.
Written at 5:53 PM by Greyhair.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Blogger Lynne said...
Does anyone have any stats on how many people have fallen off the radar? When unemployment stops, these people are dropped from the official "unemployed" count. Also, how many of these jobs are 2nd or even 3rd jobs for people? My mom read someplace that the jobs being created pay 21% less than the jobs lost.
Smoke and mirrors. That's all this regime is.
11:08 AM  
Blogger Greyhair said...
Yes Lynne, go to the link in the post. Barry Ritholz does a nice job summarizing the lack of performance by Bush including participation rates (who's in, who's out)and other data. I don't think he has anything about average pay, but I know it's been steadily falling. I didn't know that McDonalds and WalMart could add 193,000 jobs last quarter, but apparently they did!

;)
11:19 AM  
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