96,000 new jobs in September — less than the 148,000 economists had expected. The unemployment rate is steady at 5.4%. Since conventional wisdom holds that nearly 150,000 new jobs must be created to keep up with new entries to the labor market, this suggests that a significant number of workers have given up looking for work.
There’s a (slight) bright side to this report for President Bush, though:
Labor also said that, according to preliminary estimates, the economy added about 236,000 more jobs than previously thought in the year ended March 2004 and it will incorporate the change into benchmark revisions it issues next February.
As a result after including the projected change, it appears that about 585,000 jobs have been lost since President Bush took office in January 2001.
I guess that’s a very, very slight bright side. Upon reflection.
From MaxSpeak:
“This time there is no help for the Bushoids in the other survey, of households. They used to like to point to it as the more relevant, up-to-date source of inspiration for jobs springing from entrepreneurship, like mowing your neighbors’ lawns cause your job has been out-sourced. But that number is much worse — a net loss of over 200,000 jobs for September.”
Also:
“Regarding the hurricanes, the BLS includes a note to the effect that the bad weather probably had little or no effect on the data, for reasons you can discover if you go to the link above.”
(“the link above”
Is that 585,000 jobs lost figure referring only to private sector jobs? Or is that private and public sector together?
von
Here’s a commercial you may enjoy.
It’s by the director Errol Morris.
The tragedy of the whole thing is that neither candidate really has a clue on how to solve the problem.
The 2004 Irony Awards
From thousands of entries, Power Line wins this year’s Irony Award for a post entitled “Beyond the Spin.” Granted, it’s a very short post, but it leads off linking to…. (drum roll, please) The Heritage Foundation. I realize many readers felt that B…
I believe the 585,000 is public and private sector. There has been relatively stronger growth in public sector jobs during the recovery. According to the BLS site, the government sector has grown by 1,140,000 (using Jan 2001 to September 2004 numbers). Here are the deltas in more detail:
Nonfarm employment….. (600,000)
— Goods-producing…..(3,733,000)
—- Construction…… 57,000
—- Manufacturing…..(3,836,000)
— Service-producing… 3,133,000
—- Government…….. 1,140,000
Notes:
1. Other subcategories in the Goods-producing sector are not listed in the BLS summaries.
2. The BLS has expanded the list of subcategories that they summarize in the Services sector, so I’ve just listed the total and the government subcategory.
3. Quarterly numbers for the 2 time periods yield similar results.