<![CDATA[If 1,000 new jobs in December is a recovery, George Bush is an economic genius. Alas, we all live in the real world, even if the president does not. People are giving up looking for work. Despair is setting in and the jobless rate improvement announced today is simply masking that despair–yet, I’m sure we’re going to hear from President Bush that we’re “heading in the right direction.”
Here are the relevant passages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Nonfarm payroll employment was unchanged (+1,000) in December following gains totaling 277,000 in the 4 previous months. The unemployment rate, at 5.7 percent in December, continued to trend down from its recent peak of 6.3 percent in June.
Over the month, job losses in retail trade and manufacturing were offset by small gains in several service industries and construction. The number of jobs in retail trade fell by 38,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, as hiring for the holidays was less than usual in general merchandise stores and some other retail industries.
Employment in manufacturing continued to decline in December. The loss of 26,000 jobs was about in line with the average monthly decrease for September through November (21,000)….
We’re looking at absolutely no returns for ordinary Americans on the trillions of dollars of deficits wracked up by Citizen Bush. Here’s a cheery passage from the New York Times story:
“The rate is going down, but it is going down for the wrong reasons,” said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services, noting that it fell not because people were finding work. “That doesn’t make you feel really good about the state of the jobs market.”
Retail sales were nowhere near the gains anticipated in November. In fact, retail during the holiday season was absolutely dismal on the whole. The problem with reports on this situation is that newspapers want to report good news, so they focus on isolated gains while ignoring the fact that deep discounting wiped out the huge gains projected early in the holiday shopping season.
Instead of a recovery, we’re borrowing against future generations’ earnings and home equity to preserve an illusion of prosperity.]]>