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On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 23:49:42 -0500, "Thales"
wrote:

According to the Economic Policy Institute, since the recession
began 29
months ago in March 2001, 3.3 million private sector jobs have
disappeared.
This is the largest sustained loss of jobs since the Great
Depression. Since
the official end of the recession in November 2001, there has been
a 1.3
million loss in private sector jobs. Unemployment has risen to
over 8.9
million people, as the unemployment rate increased from 4.0% in
2000 to 6.1%
in August 2003.

Jobs remain 2.4 million below the level of March 2001 when the
last
recession began. This post-recession labor slump has now become
the first
(since the collection of monthly jobs data began in 1939) without
a full
recovery of jobs within 31 months of the start of a recession.
Instead of
losing jobs over the last two and a half years, the economy should
have
added 4.5 million jobs just to keep up with growth in the
working-age
population. Actual job losses instead of needed job gains have
created a
total gap of 6.9 million jobs. The record-long labor slump has
caused many
people to give up on finding a job and created a "missing" labor
force of
2.3 million. If added to the 8.8 million officially unemployed,
the
"missing" labor force would raise the unemployment rate to 7.4%.

It takes monthly gains of about 150,000 payroll jobs and 155,000
in
household employment just to keep the gap in jobs since March 2001
from
widening further. Even with job gains of 306,000 a month, as
promised by the
Administration early this year, it would take more than four years
to close
the jobs gap that two and a half years of job losses have created.

The last "new jobs" number I saw was 130,000 jobs created in
October. While
the administration touted this as a sign of recovery, in fact it
means we
are still not closing the gap, an unbelievable situation
considering the
huge deficits being generated by the current administration.


And yet Bush is still popular enough to win reelection. Go figure.

I've heard that the way the number of lost jobs are counted,
anybody who's laid off and then takes out a loan to start their own
business, is not counted as somebody who found another job. This is
even if they're better off, or at about the same level of income
that they had before. That covers a lot of people in this age of
consultants and services.

Also, I think the retail stores tell us a lot. If people are
wondering where their next paycheck is coming from, or are worried
about losing their job, retailers are going to suffer first. I
don't see retailers suffering lately. Not this Christmas. Car
buying is way up too.

two wheels


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