the Sugar Conspiracy

Friday, February 20, 2004

The numbers game

From Talking Points Memo:

In his noon press briefing yesterday, Scott McClellan listed as one of the signs the economy was on the right track the fact that "there have been more than 366,000 new jobs created in the last five months." And just an hour earlier, in a brief chat with reporters before meeting with the President of Tunisia, the president said: "I'm pleased by the fact that since August there's been 366,000 new jobs, in one survey."

Now, the problem here is that everyone at the White House from the president on down is trumpeting this number like it's a good thing, when in fact, it's not.

If I'm not mistaken there's a general consensus among economists that in our current economic circumstances we need roughly 150,000 new jobs created each month just to break even -- basically, just to keep up with a growing working age population.

So just to break even on the employment front we needed about 750,000 new jobs to have been created over the last five months. In fact, the economy created just less than half that number. So basically, 366,000 new jobs in five months isn't very good at all.

Keep your head in the clouds, George, and keep reaching for the stars!

posted by chris at 3:32 PM
------------------

Blog - Info - Archive - Contact - Links
2005 © Designed by Chris. Take what you want.