October payrolls jump by 126,000, jobless rate falls to 6%

[bfp]

U.S. economy keeps adding jobs

http://www.msnbc.com/news/990515.asp?0cv=CA01

[mc E]

what -- no smart ass retorts from the left wing peanut gallery

4 more years

[Adam D]

Originally posted by mc E
what -- no smart ass retorts from the left wing peanut gallery

4 more years

Look at that chart. Yes, the nice picture. What does it tell you? A whopping .1% drop in unemployment. The recovery marched a great 1,000 more jobs from last month. OK, we'll go with that as a victory for Bush.




Except, it's not. Retail sales are dropping, manuafacturing demands are dropping. That's a clear disprovement of the trickle down concept. The money isn't trickling down, or retail sales, and the demand to produce would be rising. Also, if you read towards the end of the article, then you would find that it discusses a significant amount of the jobs created are temporary, which means people are not being paid benefits, nor are they likely in much more economic security than they were beforehand.

[bfp]

Originally posted by Adam D
Look at that chart. Yes, the nice picture. What does it tell you? A whopping .1% drop in unemployment. The recovery marched a great 1,000 more jobs from last month. OK, we'll go with that as a victory for Bush.

yes, its 1,000 more than september, but the fact is, that 126,000 jobs were created ON TOP of the 125,000 from last month.



In the short run, they are hiring temporary workers,” Mayland said. “It is creating a pent-up demand for hiring. I think the rebound is sustainable and as we build up a track record,” more hiring will follow.


i actually see this as a positive piece of information.

Scanning the article briefly seems to support a growth, reading deeper..... I just don't know.

Keep in mind that we are in the midst of the 'Holiday Season' where temporary jobs always go up. On top of that certain sources go on to put a little more detail as to where the jobs are growing.

Job growth last month was strongest in service sector industries like health and education, while the battered manufacturing sector shed jobs for a 39th straight month

David Rosenberg, chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch, points out that the “augmented” unemployment rate, which factors in marginal workers who have temporarily dropped out of the labor force, is still at 9 percent, compared with 8.6 percent a year ago.
“This enormous pool of available workers is perhaps one key reason why wage growth is still slowing,” he said in a note


Anyway, that's just another quote out of the article, since that's where this took direction. Not four more years from me, that's for damn sure.

[Adam D]

you'll never convince the economics anti-expert of anything less than Bush's glory.

http://www.economist.com/world/na/Pr...ory_ID=2189237


America's fiscal position has deteriorated fast during George Bush's presidency. It will not be easy to reverse

LAST week's figures looked, at first, like vindication. The news that America's output grew at an extraordinary 7.2% annual rate between July and September, the fastest rate since 1984, was proof, said the White House, that the president's tax-cutting strategy was working. The economy was growing strongly, George Bush crowed, because “we left more money in the hands of the American people.”

Tax cuts are the central pillar of Mr Bush's economic strategy. He has chopped taxes in every year of his presidency, in all by as much as Ronald Reagan did in the early 1980s. His first tax package, signed into law in June 2001 and worth $1.35 trillion over ten years, was a campaign promise. It cut marginal income tax rates, gradually eliminated the estate tax and raised the child tax credit, ostensibly to make sure that the budget surplus was returned to Americans and not frittered away in Washington.

A year later, the emphasis was on stimulating the sluggish economy by giving firms tax incentives to invest. In May 2003 came another big tax plan, again sold as a stimulus, but designed mostly to shift the tax burden away from investment income by cutting taxes on dividends.

The buzz in Washington is that this tax-cut strategy will continue into election year. The White House is said to be working on a new tax package for 2004, focused on dramatically expanding tax-free retirement and savings accounts. Politically, the goal is to appeal to America's large, and growing, investor class. Economically, it would shift the tax burden yet further onto wage income. In time, most Americans' savings would be shielded from tax.

While Team Bush touts tax cuts, it never mentions the other hallmark of this administration's fiscal policy: soaring federal spending. For all his rhetoric about keeping Washington in check, Mr Bush, as one Republican analyst puts it, has been spending like “a drunken sailor”. The ever-widening war on terror, of course, accounts for much of that. According to an analysis by Veronique de Rugy at the libertarian Cato Institute, defence spending has jumped by 27% in real terms under Mr Bush, and just this week Congress approved his $87.5 billion supplemental request for Iraq. But non-military discretionary spending, (that is, spending that must be appropriated by Congress every year) has risen by 21%. Much of that increase is on homeland security, but not all. Mr Bush has merrily accepted spending bills stuffed with local pork. He has thrown money at America's farmers. He also supports a huge rise in hand-outs to America's elderly. With White House backing, Congress is about to include a prescription-drug benefit in Medicare, the government health-care plan for old people, in the biggest expansion of that programme since it began in 1965.

The combination of a sharp economic slowdown, tax cuts and higher spending has transformed America's budget. When Mr Bush ran for office, the fiscal surplus was 2.4% of GDP, one of the highest among big rich countries. By fiscal 2003, the budget deficit had reached 3.5% of GDP. Next year, by official forecasts, it is expected to reach 4.3% (see chart 1).






According to the Bush folk, this shift is unfortunate but hardly worrying. America, they claim, was hit by an unprecedented combination of economic slowdown, terrorist attacks and stockmarket collapse. But now, boosted by tax cuts,buoyant growth coupled with disciplined spending will soon stem the red ink.

Not everyone shares this nonchalance. A poll by ABC News and the Washington Post, published on November 2nd, showed that 53% of respondents disapproved of Mr Bush's tax policy. The large cast of Democratic presidential hopefuls claim Mr Bush's tax cuts have been a giveaway to the rich, wrecking the economy and mortgaging the future for America's children.

More sober analysts are also worried. In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks—the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities—recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the “most fiscally irresponsible” in the country's history.

Who is right? The stakes in this debate are high, affecting not just America's economic future, but the world's. Deciding whether to be nonchalant or nervous means answering three questions. How bad is America's fiscal position? What caused the deterioration? And how easily can it be reversed?


more at link.......................

[Adam D]

Manipulating the GNP

By Marty Jezer, AlterNet
November 6, 2003

I suppose it's proper for the Bush administration to take full credit for the 7.2 percent rise in the Gross National Product (GNP) for the third quarter. The Clinton administration, after all, took full credit for the economic prosperity of its two terms in office.


But GNP is a questionable indicator to measure the health of the economy. The sum total of all goods and services, the GNP measures current spending without regard to social efficacy, purpose or morality. The GNP values money spent on Internet pornography on a par with money spent investing in education, housing, health care, infrastructure and national security.


Even as proof of political accomplishment, GNP statistics do not cut it. As day becomes night, the economic cycle goes through periods of expansion and contraction. Prudent government policy can flatten the cycle and, perhaps, speed a recovery, but the cycle is inevitable.


President Clinton's tax policies may have contributed to the prosperity of the 1990s but they didn't, in and of themselves, create it. Clinton raised the marginal tax rate on upper-income Americans while lowering it (with the earned income credit) for low-income working Americans. Federal tax policy became fairer and perennial budget deficits were turned into record-breaking budget surpluses – good fiscal policy.


But the prosperity of the Clinton years rode on the revolution in information technology. And the predictability of capitalism's boom and bust economic cycle ultimately trumped the Pollyannaish punditry of Wall Street analysts who believed that the high-tech boom would last forever.


There's very little evidence to support the Republican boast that the Bush tax cuts have turned around the economy. A more likely rationale is that the economic cycle simply righted itself. After more than two years of under-consumption, data indicate the public is starting to purchase basic necessities – cars, clothing, home appliances and furnishings.


The Bush administration cut taxes on high incomes. Phasing out the inheritance tax and cutting taxes on dividends has had no impact on most people. As W. Michael Cox, chief economist of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, was quoted in the 11/2/03 New York Times, "The rich don't have to put off their purchases." The third quarter economic growth represents "the consumption of the masses driving the economy."


Some middle and low-income earners received tax rebates as a result of an increase in the child tax credit and an adjustment in the tax rate for certain married couples, and these tax cuts likely encouraged consumer spending. But these tax breaks always enjoyed bipartisan support independent of Bush supply-side tax-cutting proposals.


Granted, a rising GNP is better than a stagnant economy mired in recession, but the last quarter spike did not affect the appallingly high rate of unemployment. 2.7 million jobs have been lost since March 2001 and the beginning of the recession, a disaster unmatched since the era of the Great Depression. Leonard Michael of the Economic Policy Institute (www.epinet.org) reminds us that the Bush administration "sold its tax cut plan to Congress based on very specific claims about how many jobs it would create." It has not only failed to come close to its goals, it has continued to lose jobs. And low-wage job gains in the service economy are no substitute for lost high-wage jobs in the unionized manufacturing sector.


To be sure, George Bush is not entirely responsible for the high rate of unemployment. For that, blame the Clinton administration and those Republicans and Democrats who support unconditional principals of free-markets and free trade without regard for its effect on American workers and farmers. The Bush administration has done nothing to stop corporate America's downsizing of jobs and outsourcing of products. And the record-breaking budget deficits that resulted from its tax-cutting policies have made ameliorative job-retraining measures unaffordable.


What makes the loss of jobs so worrisome is that the problem is structural rather than cyclical. Not even the information industry, which fueled the Clinton prosperity, is immune from this trend. An article in the Boston Globe (11/2/03), "As Economy Gains, Outsourcing Surges" describes 20,000 English-speaking Filipinos answering telephones for Dell Computer, Proctor & Gamble, American Express, Citibank from offices in downtown Manila. The once booming Silicon Valley has been hemorrhaging high-tech jobs to low-wage countries like India, Pakistan, and Russia.


The GNP is a false measure of a phony prosperity and an irrelevant indicator of America's future. People who care about the future need to look beyond the GNP statistic and ask hard questions about job loss and trade and budget deficits, about increasing economic disparity as the rich get richer, the poor face crises of housing and health care, and middle-income Americans pile up credit card debt; about environmental issues like global warming that are going to cause expensive and socially wrenching dislocation as tides rise and the climate changes.


The Bush administration argues that the rich will invest their tax-breaks in economic productivity. Some will. But gas-guzzling Humvees,

tax-sheltered oil wells, second homes in Vail and Vermont, and weekends in Vegas are not going to move our country forward. Private sector investment is focused on short-term profit, not long-term planning. The private sector will not strengthen Medicare or shore up social security. On its own, it will not fund health-care, education, affordable housing, energy efficiency, infrastructure projects, and crucial areas of research and development. (The Internet, recall, was funded by government money, not private investors). And because of the Bush tax cuts, the federal government will no longer have the financial resources to fund these basic necessities.


The Bush administration can claim credit for this brief spurt of growth and even for the cycle of prosperity that may follow. But in terms of the future, Bush's tax-cutting priorities and his economic and environmental policies of privilege and greed will only wreak havoc on our economy and hardship on our society.

[Keith P]

you can always take a look around and decide for yourself
I'd have to say our economy is still down the shitter.
I just found out a family member got laid off.
We're talking an 8 yr. Motorolla employee.
One of the highest position engineers within the company.
and it was due to MORE "downsizing" as the company still isn't recovering from recession.
if I told you that Korean's like to eat their own feces with soy sauce you'd probably believe it wouldn't you bfp?

[Big Andy]

Originally posted by bfp
yes, its 1,000 more than september, but the fact is, that 126,000 jobs were created ON TOP of the 125,000 from last month.



In the short run, they are hiring temporary workers,” Mayland said. “It is creating a pent-up demand for hiring. I think the rebound is sustainable and as we build up a track record,” more hiring will follow.


i actually see this as a positive piece of information.

It's somewhat positive information, I agree. But if it's meant to look good on Dubya, and make me forget about the rest of Dubya's mistakes and vote for him for another term... ain't gonna happen.

[guerillahost]

PROPAGANDA!!!

[Ash]

250,000 new jobs would be great...if the actually number of unemployed were anywhere near 250,000.