JOBS SPIN

(Via Atrios)

In his radio address this week, Bush bragged that "Since May of 2003, we've added nearly 4 million new jobs. " That sounds pretty good unless you know the context. Because of population growth, we need at least 140,000 new jobs a month just to break even. 26 X 140K == 3,640K, so we are barely ahead of the break even rate for job creation. Another way to look at this is to examine the percentage of the labor force that is employed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this has declined from 66.3% in May 2003 to 66.1% in July 2005.