The Facts Show Increase of Jobs Under Bush
Paige McKenzie, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004


The media and Democrats keep repeating it over and over: "2.3 million jobs lost" since President Bush took office. His could be the worst job record since before World War II, they claim.
One little problem: It's not true.

Not only has there been no net loss of jobs during the Bush administration, there has been a net gain, even with the devastation of 9/11. At least 2.4 million jobs have been created since the president took office, 2 million of those in 2003. The gains more than offset the losses.

While Democrats continue to beat their election-year drums about outsourcing, manufacturing losses, unemployment and slow growth in employment, America’s economy has been steadily creating jobs.

At least 366,000 jobs have been created in the last five months, over 100,000 of those in January, White House press secretary Scott McClellan has noted. And though the eight-month recession “officially” ended in November, economic indicators are surprising economists and pointing toward a take-off in the recovery.

The signs:


The 5.6 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in two years and below the average of the 1980s (7.3 percent) and '90s (5.8 percent), and still continues to drop.

The nation's economic output revealed the strongest quarterly growth in 20 years. The data for the fourth quarter of 2003 show that the civilian labor force rose by 333,000, while the number of unemployed in the labor force dropped by 575,000. Even better, the number of so-called discouraged workers declined in December.

Consumer spending grew between 4 percent and 5 percent last year, and real hourly earnings rose 1.5 percent. Real earnings have risen over the last three years.

Exports doubled to 19 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to less than 9 percent in the third.

The number of American workers is at an all-time high of 138.5 million, a level never before attained in U.S. history.

Jobless claims are 10 percent below the average of the last 25 years and still falling.

Hiring indices are up, even in manufacturing.

Productivity growth is extremely high.

Now the doomsayers are criticizing the validity of the unemployment rate, which at 5.6 percent does not fit their gloomy story.


Faulty Counting


The problem is the areas of biggest job growth are usually not even being counted at all.


Though 75 percent of jobs are created by small companies, according to the Small Business Administration, this sector’s entrepreneurial activity and the jobs it creates are left out by Washington bean counters when calculating official new job numbers.


The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does its Payroll Survey by phoning businesses to crunch the number of jobs that have been gained or lost. This is where Democrats grabbed onto their lifeline, the 2.3 million figure. Look only at the Payroll Survey, and there has been a gain of only 522,000 jobs since Bush took office.

But here’s the rub. The Household Survey is used to determine the unemployment rate and accounts for those who are self-employed, and small emerging businesses that might be overlooked by the Payroll Survey. But the number of U.S. firms isn’t static, and the "fixed list" used by the BLS for phoning established businesses does not reflect new entrepreneurial activity.

People are called at home and asked if they have jobs, or if they are in the market for a job. In contrast to the Payroll Survey, the Household Survey shows that 2.4 million jobs have been created so far during Bush's time in office.

As Economy.com writer Haseeb Ahmed recently wrote, "something is amiss in the [Payroll] survey."

Credit Where Credit Is Due

That’s not all. When doomsayers, and media spoiling for a fight in an election year, laughed at Bush’s prediction of 2.6 million new jobs this year, not everyone was scoffing.

Ahmed, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and others hardly batted an eye. Greenspan said it was "probably feasible" the economy would reach the Bush administration's forecast of adding 2.6 million jobs this year, provided growth continues and the productivity rate slows to more typically levels.

"I don't think it's 'Fantasyland,'" Greenspan said.

"I agree with him," said John Ryding, chief market economist at Bear Stearns. "I think that we will create 2.5 million, possibly more, jobs over the balance of the year."

Ahmed is convinced that "the revision patterns of the early-1990s recovery cycle" will be repeated. A total of 1.4 million job gains were revised upward to 2.9 million in the first 21 months after the end of the last recession, just after Bush Sr. was voted out of office.


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...5/171833.shtml


Yet another liberal lie is exposed. Bush is doing the best job on the economy since Reagan.

Who does the household survey? Is it the BLS or someone else?

I actually think that the US econmy is doing quite well at the moment, but that isn't at all surprising given that $500 billion pounds more is being invested into the economy by the government than is being taken out. Prepare for an ass-biting a few years down the line. Not until GWB is out of office, most likely, so he's not that bothered.

I remember in the last few years of the Thatcher government here in the UK.

1. I didn't have employment
2. I wanted employment
3. I was actively seeking employment

However, according to the Thatcher government statistical measurements, I wasn't counted as "unemployed".

Statistics are a wonderfully malleable thing in the hands of politicians.

BLS does the survey, but they are not calling new businesses, only old ones.


Where are you getting your $500 billion pound figure?

I believe that's your expected budget deficit. $477 billion in fact.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3430405.stm

We are currently running a deficit caused by a recession and a war. Both of those are very good reasons to incur debt. Our deficit is quite small, and issued at historically low interest rates. It's not going to be a problem during Bush's second term at all.

Isn't it amazing how so many different people, interpret the US National deficit in so many different ways...

Anyway, what you call "small" Lawson, I would call it anything but small...
If $7 Trillion dollars is "Small" - what would you call large - $10,000 Trillion ?

As to the CURRENT US National Debt;

Now tell us what the deficit is as a percentage of GDP, and then tell how how it is nowhere near the largest.

Greenspan: Make Bush Tax Cuts Permanent
AP ^ | Thu Feb 12,10:56 PM ET | By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer




WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites) said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush (news - web sites)'s tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security (news - web sites) and other entitlement programs.

Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee that Congress, "as a first order of business," should restore budget rules that cap discretionary government spending and require increases in entitlement benefits or cuts in taxes to be offset by other program cuts or other tax increases.

Greenspan was asked how he would come up with the decade-long cost of $1 trillion to pay for extending the 2001 and 2003 individual tax cuts. "I would argue strenuously that it should be taken out on the expenditure side," he answered.

Greenspan, chairman of a commission that recommended solutions to a Social Security funding crisis in 1983, said he has felt for long time that the promised program benefits greatly outweighed the government's ability to pay for them.

He recommended two items for study in terms of trimming benefits: linking the retirement age to the population's longer life spans and tying annual cost of living benefits in Social Security to a less-generous inflation index than the Consumer Price Index (news - web sites).

The Economist predicts a deficit of 5.2% of GDP. The White House predicts 4.5%.

http://www.economist.com/countries/U...ofile-Forecast

In perspective, the EU guidelines for responsible fiscal policy put the limit at 3%. That France and Germany have gone over that limit is seen as extremely worrying for the Eurozone. The US deficit is huge, in other words. There may have been larger ones in the past, I don't have time to check, but since when was that a justification for anything? Who says it was right then? Why does the US need to do this to itself now?

Section 7 here shows the estimates for the federal debt as a proportion of GDP. As you can see, it came down from the WWII all the way to Reagan, who sent it off upwards again. Clinton just about managed to bring it under control before Bush sent it rocketing again. It is predicted to rise to levels not seen since 1952, when you were still paying off WWII. Unbelievable irresponsibility. I fail to see how Republicans seem to see themselves as the party of fiscal repsonsibility.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...5/pdf/hist.pdf

Section 1 shows the budget surpluses and deficits, but doesn't show them as a % of GDP. It does, however, show that the deficit is well over 25% of the total tax receipts. I think it also assumes that the tax cuts won't be made permanent.


Incidentally Corporate Pig, this doesn't really affect the thrust of your point, but the deficit is not the same as the debt. The deficit is the disprepancy each year, the debt is the accumulation of the deficits over time, so the deficit is about $500 billion and the debt is about $7 trillion.

Bush has a plan to half the deficit by 2008. So there is the solution.



No, Reagan was not in control of Congress, which controls spending. The Democrats spent $1.62 for every new dollar Reagan brought in. Reagan doubled revenues to the Treasury from $500 billion to $1 trillion during his two terms. Still the Dims spent far more than he brought in.


Clinton projected deficits the first two years of his Presidency. The Republicans took over in 1994, and they balanced the budget in only six years. Those were the first balanced budgets in 30 years of Democrat rule over the House and Senate.

Because the GDP grows each year, the only way to compare is by using % of GDP. This is not the largest deficit by a long shot using those rules.

Nobody's ever asked me if I'm unemployed.
So how the hell do they know how many people are unemployed? Mmm? They don't, and the fact is that it was brilliantly demonstrated in a previous thread that they don't even come close to the actual amount of unemployed people, and that the unemployment amount is decreasing due to so much time going by and the unemployed listed as unemployed being taken off the list due to that time going by.

They poll the employers, not the employees. Read the article.

By 2008 the economic cycle is expected to have flipped, so you really ought to be in surplus then. Having a deficit at the peak of the cycle is irresponsible. If you're not going to pay your debts in the good times, when else are you going to pay them? Having a $250 billion deficit at that stage of the cycle is no solution to anything.

A grasp of the facts might help you. Republicans controlled the Senate between 1980 and 1986, so you can't blame it all on the Democrats.

Well if the Republicans are so wonderful I don't see why they making such a balls up of things now.

I never once said it was. What I did say, and what you have ignored (this is getting to be a habit with you) is that it doesn't matter how big it is compared with other times. This is not then, this is now, and it is wrong now. The recession that we've just had was a very shallow one, it doesn't justify this sort of borrowing.

It's well below the average rate of 4.5% of GDP by then. We ran deficits for 30 straight years when Democrats ran Congress.


All spending bills originate in the House, not the Senate. I'll forgive you for your lack of grasp of the facts, as you are a foreignor.


Hmm, the best economy in 20 years, the lowest interest rates in 50 years, the lowest inflation rate in 50 years, and unemployment lower than the average of each of the last 3 decades.

We'll take it!


The borrowing was in part, left over from previous debt, based on rosier economic conditions. We've has a recession, a terrorist attack, and corporate scandals, all that were rooted in Clinton's term. We've had to spend to create an entirely new branch of Government, the Dept. of Homeland Defense, plus fight two wars.

Borrowing money is appropriate during economic slowdowns, and times of war. We have had both.

And that proves that they don't know how many people are actually unemployed.


As for the overall increase of jobs under Bush's little thing, if I remember correctly he's still actually in the negative in overall amount of jobs lost/gained since he came into office.


But then again I don't sit around constantly looking at fact sheets.

That's what the article says. There are far more people employed in new startup businesses than they are counting, making the real jobs gain much higher.



No, he's up 100,000, in spite of the Clinton recession., and the economy is skyrocketing now, so there will soon be millions more.



That's ok, you have us to do that for you.