Not waving, but drowning
George Bush, John Snow and all the Governors of the Federal Reserve have been out on the propaganda circuit of late, talking up the US economy to anyone who will listen. It’s just a “soft patch,” they say; robust growth is just around the corner.
To anyone interested in cutting through the bull and looking at the actual numbers, however, this “soft patch” is far from over. In fact, it’s spreading (for all your deflating-economy-news needs, stop by General Glut’s Globblog).
The latest evidence is the lackluster jobs report from September, released today by the Labor Department. Last month the US economy produced just 96,000 new jobs. Lest you think this is a good number and thus become a victim of Bush administration spin, note that we need around 150,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth. Thus in September the US economy generated only about two-thirds of the jobs necessary just to tread water.
This chart shows the number of nonfarm jobs in the US from January 2001 to the present to the left of the vertical black line. As you can see we’re still well short of the March 2001 high — 940,000 jobs short to be precise. The trend line (to the right of the horizontal black line) from the last four months tracks a pretty sad path. At the rate we’re going, the US economy will simply make it back to the March 2001 jobs level in July 2005! From peak to recovery, that’s a 52-month jobs recession.
Here’s a bit of perspective. The Carter jobs recession lasted 11 months. The Nixon/Ford jobs recession lasted 24 months. The Reagan jobs recession lasted 26 months. The GHWBush jobs recession lasted an amazing 38 months (remember the “jobless recovery” of the 1990s?). Dubya’s is 42 months and counting.
Herbert Hoover, eat your heart out.
Forget what Bush and his cronies say today. We’re not waving, but drowning.
October 8th, 2004 at 9:57 am
You’re right, nice graphs. The first one showing posted payroll job growth since 01 then does not adjust for population growth, right? If we want to put these brute numbers into that perspective and assume a 5% population increase throughout the period, we could just tilt the vertical axis a tad to the right, no? [Letmesee, I used to know how to do this, arctan(.05),no?] OK, so a 4 degree clockwise rotation seems like small potatoes.
The other graph shows a trend that looks like the next downturn will be the last one, if this one isn’t. This does look like forces beyond Bush are working here. Sure, he’s not helping but that trend goes beyond his period, no?
October 8th, 2004 at 1:28 pm
You’ve neglected to blame Clinton, 9/11, and the Iraq War.
I don’t see how you are ever going to garner legitimacy in right-wing circles at this rate.
October 8th, 2004 at 8:25 pm
Indeed, this is a structural problem for the US economy regardless of who sits in the White House. The incredible American jobs machine, thrown in the face of the Europeans throughout the 1980s and late 1990s, is no more.