I suggest a read of Bill Hobbs who unscrews the spin the media has placed on the July jobs report. And also notes the numerious advances in the economy since Bush took office and useful links as well.

The unemployment rate has fallen from 6.2 percent in July 2003 to 5.5 percent now.

The number of unemployed people has fallen from 9.1 million in july 2003 to 8.2 million now.

In Jaunary 2001, the month that George W. Bush took office, 135,999,000 Americans had jobs. By October of that year, the number of Americans with jobs had slumped to 134,562,000 - as the sudden negative economic impact of the 9/11 attacks combined with the economic slowdown that began almost a year before Bush took office (with the stock market collapse in April 2000) to cause unemployment to surge.

We've turned a corner. Unfortunately, the brakes aren't working.

Here are a few economic tidbits that might be helpful:

- The economy began to weaken in mid-2000, and the stock market began to plummet in March 2000 (when Clinton was Prez).

- Alan Greenspan himself has said that the minor recession we experienced in 2001 would have been much worse without the Bush tax cuts.

- Greenspan also says we are presently experiencing a "soft patch" but that the economy is otherwise doing quite well, and will be full-on booming again by the end of the year.

- The corporate scandals that we discovered under Bush were well underway when Clinton was President, so the economic hit the country took because of them can hardly be blamed on Bush.

- The 9/11 attacks, which the 9/11 Commission says Bush cannot be blamed for, totally crippled many US industries, and they are just getting back on their feet again.

- Most of the budget deficit we have now can be blamed on the negative impact of 9/11, the cost of the war on terror, increased domestic security spending, and the Clinton recession, and NOT the Bush tax cuts.

For now, that is all.

No amount of right-wing spin will change the facts.

Economists (who don't work for the Heritage Foundation or similarly-inclined organizations) agree that the job numbers are terrible, and the stock market agrees that the economy is heading the same way (DJIA dropped 3% this week alone, 6% so far this year and NASDAQ has done much worse).

Note that using percentages masks the damage that has been done on jobs. The number of unemployed has increased from 6 million when Bush took office to over 8 million plus an additonal 3-6 million not "on the books" but still out of work. Taking the growth of population - and consequent new entries into the labor force - into account, we're short about 7 to 10 million jobs since Bush took office (about 5 million of that is from new entries into the work force over the last four years).

The last president who lost more jobs in his adminstration was herbert Hoover.

The deficit is this adminstration's fault, a combination of reckless spending and reckless tax cuts which largely went to the rich instead of to those at the bottom of the economic scale who might have spent the money and given the economy a boost. Worse, this administration does not seem to have any fiscal sense, much less responsibility, at all.

And the quality of life for all except the rich is in decline, as the Business Week data shows (confirmed in numerous other unbiased business media).

And oh yeah, there was no Clinton recession, no matter how hard the administration tried to change the rules to create one: Inventing the Clinton Recession.

Admit it: this adminstration flopped.

"No amount of right-wing spin will change the facts."

I just wrote about "the facts."

Try again...

"Economists (who don't work for the Heritage Foundation or similarly-inclined organizations) agree that the job numbers are terrible"

Cite them. And no left-wing kooks either...

The unemployment rate has been dropping. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs have been created. Our GDP has been increasing. Productivity has been increasing.

"The last president who lost more jobs in his adminstration was herbert Hoover."

Riiight. We are in a "depression" everyone! And John Kerry's tax hikes are the answer!

I've never had a better job than I do now. This economy is arguably growing at the fastest pace since Reagan was in office.

Clinton lucked into a tech boom (the "new" economy) that allowed his tax increases to take effect without major negative economic consequences. And the GOP-controlled Congress kept his spending in line (mostly).

The last time a Democrat didn't luck into an economic "miracle" we had Jimmy Carter.

Case closed.

Rewrite:

"The last time we had a Democrat President who didn't luck into an economic "miracle" we had Jimmy Carter and the misery index..."

Here is a quote from your "inventing the Clinton recession' link.

Instead of using the accepted start date of March 2001, the CEA announced that the recession really started in the fourth quarter of 2000 ? a shift that would make it much more credible for the Bush administration to term it the "Clinton Recession."

So we are to believe that shift in where the recession started, a shift of a few months makes a difference?

So lets say the recession started on the "accepted date." That gave Bush 2 months from the time he took office until the official start. Please, Bush spent more time replacing missing keys on all the White House computers [stupid childish bastards] than he did wrecking the economy.

It also means that the recession started before any actions on the econ. by Bush were taken.
[edited]

The difference "a shift of a few months makes" is that it seems to make N. Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, a lying whore.

I suppose, though, that in trying to shift the recession so it could be called the "Clinton Recession" he was following in the best of right-wing conservative tradition.

During Reagan's tenure, the administration tried 'to convince the NBER to combine the 1980 and 1981-82 recessions into a single downturn that could be called the "Carter Recession."' That didn't work, either.

This is the same N. Gregory Mankiw who, earlier this year, said that sending jobs overseas is good for the United States.

And the same formerly-respected economist N. Gregory Mankiw who, in his popular textbook Principles of Economics, tells us that running a deficit "pulls resources away from investment in new capital and, thereby, depresses the living standards of future generations."

Yet in the service of the right supports year after year of record-setting deficits which in fact do "[pull] resources away from investment in new capital and, thereby, [depress] the living standards of future generations." We're seeing the beginnings of that now.

I would have expected some intellectual honesty on an issue this critical to the country, but instead it seems to be "the party, uber alles - get in step, Mankiw" and Mankiw Stepfords into place.



As for as the "rate dropping," I think I covered that. Using the percentage rate, which isn't really a measure but a projection of a survey of a limited number of households, masks the severity of the job losses in this country.



Ah, yes, "productivity" - thank you.

Productivity appears to be going up, but all is not as it seems: Offshoring jobs increases the productivity number.

Productivity is essentially the Gross Domestic Product divided by the number of employed.

When Levi shuts their last US factory and fires 2,000 workers, the company contribution to the GDP remains the same but there are that many fewer workers so productivity "goes up." When Siemens ships 15,000 programming jobs to China and Eastern Europe, productivity "gets a boost." When Intel and other tech companies open R & D operations in India so they don't need to import 130,000 H1B workers, it's another "plus for productivity."

But nothing has really changed in the U.S., at least not for the better. "Productivity" stats need to be considered with a grain of salt.



And for RJ, in the Wall Street Journal (right-wing enough for you?) we find economists saying the following:

"This soft July report poses a real problem for the market. ... Assertions, our own included, that June's disappointment was an aberration are clearly more difficult to defend in light of July's massive shortfall."

-- Daragh Maher, economist, ING Financial Markets
* * *

"There's little doubt now that the economy is struggling." The July jobs report "suggests loud and clear that the soft patch continues."

-- Douglas Porter, senior economist, Nesbitt Burns

"Despite lengthening, the workweek remains very short, reflecting the nervousness among companies to firmly commit to expanding their businesses. Hourly earnings are slowly accelerating ... but have lagged behind the acceleration in consumer inflation. Longer hours and faster real earnings gains are needed to sustain consumer spending and economic growth."

-- Steven Wood, chief economist, Insight Economics

And oh yeah, RJ, the economy is NOT "arguably growing at the fastest pace since Reagan was in office."

The GDP is growing at about a 3% rate right now.

We also need a discussion some day about how "the economy" is not the GDP, but that's more than I want to get into right now.

RJ's economic arguments always boil down to his personal circumstances:

"I've never had a better job than I do now..."


Hal - any way to tell what wage levels the new jobs are at? Do they track that data?

I'm guessing that the majority are low-pay, no benefits.

I don't have salary numbers, Shark, but this time I do know that quite a few of the losses were in consumer sectors (retail and financial services for example). These generally pay wages at the lower end of the scale, so there were probably larger gains in some of the better-paying areas. If I find a complete breakdown, I'll let you know.

The job losses this time were probably driven by a consumer spending dropping. The July numbers aren't out yet, but in June consumer spending dropped 0.7%, the biggest drop since September 2001.

This time it didn't take a terrorist attack. Spending is down (and 23,000 jobs in financial services were lost) because the re-fi boom is over. People have refi-ed and spent most of the money.

They're now waking up to fiscal reality - fewer jobs, lower wages, much higher costs for gas, health care, tution, etc. and no change in sight.

Here's a break-down from the BLS establishment survey, Shark, showing changes by sector, with lots of detail.

Note that in their press release, the Labor Department under Elaine Chao used tables with data from the household survey, which is nowhere near as valid but is consistently used by the right because it shows many more jobs being created. You should use the Establishment "B" tables, not the Household "A" tables if you want the best data.

[Before you righties jump in, note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself, the Congressional Budget Office, Allan Greenspan and intellectually-honest economists everywhere (whose ranks may not include N. Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers) all agree that the establishment survey is the survey to use for jobs data.]

None of the figures, of course, include salaries so we can't tell which new jobs had better or worse salaries with or without health care, but as the other BLS data showed, about two-thirds of hires took lower wages.

Regardless of who becomes president we are going to be facing a tough job market for awhile. Our workers expect to make five to ten times what many overseas employees earn. With free trade agreements in place there is no way we can continue to compete.

Our education is not five to ten times better and neither is our work ethic. The models that show free trade helping everyone make some very large assumptions that may not apply to the information economy. I do believe that free trade will improve the world economy. India and China are enjoying the benefits right now, but I also believe it will have an evening out effect on very rich countries.

At least with outsourcing some of the money goes through US corporations. If we stop this practice foreign companies will just take up the slack and we will be left with nothing.

"fewer jobs, lower wages, much higher costs for gas, health care, tution[sic], etc. and no change in sight."

Let's take these one at a time...

"Fewer Jobs" - The economy have seen well over a million new jobs created since 2003. In July, we added about another 30,000. This addition of jobs is declared a "disaster" by Kerry supporters because it did not meet the optimistic hopes of economists.

"Lower Wages" - Wages continue to increase, though at a relatively weak pace.

"Higher Costs For Gas" - Where I live, gas prices have dropped a good 20-25 cents per gallon over the last few months. Bush wanted to increase supply by drilling for oil here in the US, but Democrats refused. Much of the price increase in crude oil can be attributed to Red China's growing thirst for this product.

"Health Care" - Bush has signed an insanely expensive bill into law that offers an RX benefit for seniors. But health care costs will conyinue to rise NO MATTER WHO BECOMES PRESIDENT because this is a sector that faces vastly increasing demand, and a very limited supply.

"Tuition" - People spend less on college tuition than they used to, even though tuition costs have increased. How is this possible, you ask? Because the gov't has been offering more and more funding for it. The average student winds up paying LESS than they used to, even though the bill is larger.

"And no change in sight" - No less an authority than Alan Greenspan predicts strong economic growth returning by the end of the year. You know, while Bush is still President and his policies are still in place, regardless of the outcome of the November elections...

You don't have a case, RJ.

You keep trying to spin past the facts, but they're pretty spin-resistant.

Certainly jobs have been created since last year, but that's spin because you pick a time span that works for you. Bureau of Labor statistics show that total non-farm employment peaked in March 2001 at 132.5 million, but had dropped to 131.1 million in June 2004. There has been a net job loss of 1.4 million jobs.

Additionally, another 5 million people have entered the work force during the last four years and they don't have jobs, either. Besides the 8.2 million unemployed (that was 6 million when Bush took office), the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that there are an additional 4,767,000 who want a job but are not counted elsewhere.

Wage growth is nearly flat, and has dropped when adjusted for inflation (real wages dropped 2.6% in June alone, but corporate profits are up 41% over a year ago).

Gas prices have dropped "in the last few months" but have risen dramatically nevertheless. Oil is at $45 a barrel, Middle East production is pretty much maxed out (where's the Iraqi oil we were promised from the invasion?), and Bush is still pouring oil into the national reserve so the future looks bleak. There is the possibility, of course, that Bush will stop the latter at the appropriate time before the election, so perhaps there is hope on gas prices.

We can't drill our way out of the fix: the U. S. consumes 25% of the world's energy, has 3% of the oil reserves. (As a parlor game, trying assembling a list of those in this administration and in Congress who have ties to the oil industry.)

Health care premiums rose more than 50% during this administration. Additionally, companies are cutting back on offering health insurance:

As it is, between 2001 and 2003, 9-million people lost their employer-provided health insurance, according to a survey released last week by the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change.

Further, federal laws passed during this administration don't improve healthcare much but do increase federal expenditures and do improve the profits of companies in the health care industry (think 'campaign contributions'). See: The Medicare Bill (File under 'Congressional Cons').

On tuition, some may pay less, most pay more. Don't just buy into the party line - check it out.

RJ: No less an authority than Alan Greenspan predicts ...

Did you miss the part where he turned into a partisan Republican earlier this year? You can Google it.

Bt the way, for those of you interested in staying on top of the jobs picture, you can get a monthly newsletter from Jobswatch.org. Here's a sample of their discussion of some of the latest BLS figures:

Pay suffers as displaced worker rate climbs to highest on record

The latest survey on worker displacement confirms just how bleak the labor market has been in the last three years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released the results from the biennial survey conducted in January 2004. The survey asks adult workers permanently displaced from their jobs in the last three years about their subsequent labor market experience. The latest survey, concerning job displacements in 2001-03 among those with at least three years of tenure at their previous job, found that a higher share of such workers (6.3%) had been displaced in those three years than in any previous survey. Although the rate of displacement was almost as high in the early 1980s and early 1990s, those periods were marked by much higher unemployment rates. The latest survey also found that almost two-thirds of displaced workers had taken another job at lower pay (30%) or remained jobless (35%).

Perhaps most striking is the contrast between pay in the lost jobs versus pay in the new jobs. For those lucky enough to land a new full-time job, the median pay rate fell from $681 per week in their old job to $572 per week in their new job. As shown in the figure above, that 16% difference in weekly pay far exceeds the gap of recent years and matches the gap during the "jobless recovery" of the early 1990s.

"On tuition, some may pay less, most pay more. Don't just buy into the party line - check it out."

I did. In the USA Today. Or are they now a right-wing mouthpiece?

I was just reading Bill Moyer's Keynote Speech at the Inequality Matters Forum, last June. His speech details a class war being waged on Middle America, by the conservative, corporate elite. Led of course, by Bush, which is why he gets the 'results' he does.

From Bill's speech:

These deficits have been part of their strategy. Some of you will remember that Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to warn us 20 years ago, when he predicted that President Ronald Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, admitted as such. Now the leading rightwing political strategist, Grover Norquist, says the goal is to "starve the beast" -- with trillions of dollars in deficits resulting from trillions of dollars in tax cuts, until the United States Government is so anemic and anorexic it can be drowned in the bathtub.

There's no question about it: The corporate conservatives and their allies in the political and religious right are achieving a vast transformation of American life that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, they have saddled our nation, our states, and our cities and counties with structural deficits that will last until our children's children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions except rewarding the rich and waging war.

And they are proud of what they have done to our economy and our society. If instead of practicing journalism I was writing for Saturday Night Live, I couldn't have made up the things that this crew have been saying. The president's chief economic adviser says shipping technical and professional jobs overseas is good for the economy. The president's Council of Economic Advisers report that hamburger chefs in fast food restaurants can be considered manufacturing workers. The president's Federal Reserve Chairman says that the tax cuts may force cutbacks in social security - but hey, we should make the tax cuts permanent anyway. The president's Labor Secretary says it doesn't matter if job growth has stalled because "the stock market is the ultimate arbiter."

People do NOT "spend less on college tuition than they used to" as you claimed, RJ.

I need a link to see exactly what USA Today said. I can't believe they'd make a blanket statement that's so wrong. Perhaps you misread it.

In South Carolina: "Walter Dunlap of Sumter took out a $10,000 loan last year to help cover costs at The Citadel, where his son is a sophomore. This year, the banker plans to borrow about $16,000 through a program offered by the South Carolina Student Loan Corp."

Tuitions up steeply nationwide. The increases at flagship universities could be the largest in 30 years ... public universities were planning tuition increases in all 38 states that responded to a recent survey by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. Double-digit rises are common, with at least 10 universities planning increases of 20 percent or more.

House Education & the Workforce Committee

Do a search and you'll find a lot more of the same. This administration appears to be anti-education, too.

BCB, that last paragraph sounds like Moyers has been reading my stuff (except I haven't blogged the Elaine Chao part yet :-)

Hal, serious question, not an argument phrased as a questionL What does the federal government have to do with tuition rates? Colleges and universities are either state or private. The govt, which guarantees student loans, would benefit from lower tuition rates. There's clearly something I've missed.

I can't disagree with you until I know what. :)

My apologies, RJ: you were right and I was wrong on tuition.

What I didn't know as the college tuition is simply a "sticker price" that, as the Washington Times says, is a scam. The higher the price, the more federal and state aid they get.

They then proceed to hand out grants liberally so student tuition costs in general have actually been dropping on average since 1998.

For anyone else as gullible as I have been on this,here are a few links:

Kerry on tuition costs Washington Times 7/5/04

Tuition burden falls by a third USA Today 6/28/04

Keep rising prices in perspective CollegeBoard.com

Cossts are going up this year, and this last link tells us that "most students and their families can expect to pay, on average, from $231 to $1,114 more than last year for this year's tuition and fees, depending on the type of college" but that's not nearly what the tuition increases would indicate.

And I fell for it (I hate when that happens).

Mark your calendars! Not only is this the second anniversary of Blogcritics (Congratulations, Eric, Phillip, et al. who made it a success!) but this is THE FIRST TIME IN its history that someone actually admitted they were wrong, made a mistake, and apologized.

Kudos to Hal Pawluk for showing two rare traits in contemporary America, HONESTY & INTEGRITY.

I think he should get a free t-shirt or sumthin'.

xxoo
Shark