June 24, 2004
Economics Roundup
There's a lot of chatter lately about job growth or the lack thereof under Bush. Clearly, things are improving compared to the first couple of years of Bush's reign, but not much and not enough.
The Gadflyer points out that "fewer than 6,000 net new jobs" have been created per month in the last nine months.
The Campaign Desk lists some blogger criticisms of how the news media is covering economic news.
One of the links in that article is this Brad DeLong post discussing the difference between an improving economy and a good economy while pointing out that we still only have the former.
However, Pejman thinks the news isn't that dire and praises a USA Today article criticizing Kerry's honesty in discussing current economic misery.
Whiskey Bar, on the other hand, laments another example of economic ignorance on the part of the news media while confirming Kerry's statement that wage increases are not keeping up with inflation.
Still, there is some encouraging news on the horizon, but it's unclear if the number of jobs companies plan to add matches the optimism of the article. It only states that the percentage of companies planning to add jobs is rising, not actual numbers. Even so, a higher number of companies hiring is bound to be a good thing whether it's enough to make up for lost jobs or not.
UPDATE: Brad DeLong and Matthew Yglesias pile on NRO's economic writing.
Strangely, you overlooked this link. An excerpt:
On June 18, 2004, the government released May jobs figures for states across the country – and the news is good. According to statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job creation was up in 44 of the 50 states in the last year, and the unemployment rate was down in all regions and in 46 of the 50 states.Nationwide, the economy has posted steady job gains for each of the last nine months – creating more than 1.4 million new jobs since August. The national unemployment rate stood at 5.6% in May – down 0.7 percentage point from a peak of 6.3% in June 2003 – and below the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Nearly 1 million new jobs have been created in the last 100 days alone.
Across the country, 248,000 new jobs were created in May according to the payroll survey – and the increases in April and March were revised upward by 58,000 and 16,000, respectively, for a combined upward revision of 74,000 new jobs.
On average, over 237,000 jobs per month have been created since the beginning of this year.
The household survey also shows a big increase in jobs, up 1.5 million since August.
Yeah, it was unfair of me not to include the President's propaganda. Some of the articles I linked to deal specifically with the job growth numbers and show that they're not that impressive. We're still looking at a net loss despite the recent improvements. Plus, their unemployment numbers have understated the problem for the last couple of years by ignoring underemployment and those who've simply quit looking. I would imagine those stats have improved lately, but you can't tell from that summary. Still, it's overall good news, but not something to crow about quite yet.
I must say I'm impressed. That is the first time I have ever seen or heard you refer to Mr. Bush as "the President." Incredible. :)
Anyway, those are pretty raw numbers, not propaganda. There are links to the BLS stats there if you would like to look at them. People with number brains can disagree over the interpretation of the statistics, but I am not one of those people. Where's President Bartlett when we need him?
ABC World News Tonight: more than 200,000 new jobs this month, on pace for more than 2 million new jobs this year. Kerry, in a stump speech (in what I think was Ohio?) said that the new jobs that are being created pay on average 9K less per year than those being lost. One talking head analyst commented that if Kerry continues to focus on the negative in the face of what are becoming overwhelmingly positive economic indicators, he may lose some credibility.