The Facts Show 2.4 Million Jobs Created Under Bush

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 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."

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.

If elected, will John Kerry get credit for the jobs created under the Bush administration?

How not to become a millionaire....join a union! The mediots in the press cry and howl about the 2 million jobs that we have lost in the past 3-4 years. They forget to mention that we have the lowest unemployment we have had in 30 years, but that doesn’t make good propaganda. While France, Germany and the rest of the turd world is comfortable with unemployment rates of over 10% PravdABDNC complains about near full employment.

Having quit my job in October, I can relate to the fear of being out of work. Having worked for Democrat spokesman Ellen Rat...ner’s family for over 8 years in the evil lumber industry. Ellen Rat...ner made her money by “raping” the forests as one of the top three lumber companies (Forest City Group), yet she is the biggest environmentalist on the planet?? Can you say limolib empathizing with the poor homeless on her way to the gala wearing a half mil in jewels??? So I quit working for her big corporation and started my own little company and am having the time of my life. Anyone ever wonder how many filthy rich are Rats??

For self motivated people, working for yourself is the only way to go. The benefits far outweigh the minuses. You may have to work twice as hard for half the pay or you may end up making more money than you will working for a corporation. In my case I am making more money and not working nearly as hard as I was. I am putting people to work in the Carolinas and Virginia that may not be working if I didn’t open this company.

What do I do besides surf the net? I am a lumber wholesaler who feeds the Log Home industry. This gives me plenty of opportunity for creativity while developing a niche in a growing market. Self employment is being repeated throughout this country as people who have spent a lifetime learning a profession are able to break out on their own. We don’t need or want a boss or a union to tell us how much we can or can’t earn. Not everyone can do this, but you may be surprised how easy it is once you take that first step.

I can speak to the job losses in the solid wood furniture industry throughout the South. You have to look no farther than Congress and lawyers to see why they have left. Yes, labor and materials are cheaper in China; but the gummit is far more friendly to businesses there too. When employers cannot pay the workman’s compensation due to John Edward’s type Ambulance Chasers and oppressive gummit regulation, why would any company stay here? The lumber industry has taken the most draconian regulations of any industry in this country. Loggers can’t even harvest dead trees left by the huge fires because of the hug a tree terrorists? Why shouldn’t the companies close their doors after the Democrats and their leftist extremists have finished with them. Rats hate big business and cry when there are no jobs when businesses are forced out.

Sure, PravdABDNC will blame W for the job losses and not give him credit for this economic recovery. Most of this recovery is happening because productivity and technology is up. Many of the manufacturing jobs are being mechanized and will in the future. With software there are millions of bookkeeping/buggy whip jobs that are being phased out. The bottom line is that computers work a lot faster and cheaper than workers. Kerry is just going to make this happen quicker as he forces labor expenses up.

Anybody that will work for anything can get work at a 94.5% employment rate. Go into sells and get paid what you are truly worth. For all those that think sells is below their dignity, salesmen generally make about 150% of the average and many are in the top 10% of incomes. Nothing happens in Capitalism until the sale is closed.

President Bush has done a Herculean job over the past 3 years as this country has been knocked down again and again and is finally recovering. Everybody knew that the economy was faltering when he took the job and Great Depression was mentioned more than once. He had to unravel the dot com bust and dishonesty from the past 10 years to regain trust in the markets. He still has huge hurdles to overcome with deregulating many of the industries and opening our natural resources to effective management. There are great untapped resources for us that are entrepreneurs looking to put our skills and crafts to the test. We can either move forward as a country and mighty Capitalistic machine or move backwards towards Socialist France and endure their turd world lifestyle.

Pray for W and The Truth

I posted the following about a month ago. Click here.

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Manufacturing is the art of turning raw materials into a marketable product of greatly increased value. Without manufacturing, there is no source of wealth beyond a nation's natural resources and the creative skills of it's people and the middle east nations who have not developed their people and built a manufacturing capability with the money they've received from their oil resources will very soon find out that they are once again a third world nation.

While automation should naturally reduce manufacturing jobs, the people who planned to go to those manufacturing jobs did not develop their skills to do anything else and those manufacturing jobs have now gone overseas. The same thing is happening with white collar jobs (i.e. software is being developed in India).

With the free trade agreements, the race to the bottom began in earnest. Who will do what for less? Without global parity in wages, jobs will continue to leave this country. Unless you are in an export-controlled capacity or you are directly involved in the manufacture of an item with a large percentage of its cost associated with distribution (such as raw lumber and dog food) or you are involved in direct service to the two prior established groups, your job is going overseas. Right now the US is leaking capital at an increasing rate in terms of debt. That accelerating debt is keeping us level for now, but don't count on that continuing forever.

Unfortunately, this nation is headed for another depression unless global parity in wages is accepted by the workers in this nation. With the unions directing US workers, I don't expect that to happen soon enough.

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Yes, W and the Fed are largely responsible for keeping us from depression to date, but I wonder how much longer we can tread water without true wage parity. Kerry and the liberals may tell the people what they want to here, but in the mean time, we're sinking fast.

Yeah -- the guy is right. There is "something amiss" -- it is in the HOUSEHOLD SURVEY> It is pure estimated garbage. A guy who made $100K in 2000 making $25K at home doing contract work is not the same as a full-time employee in the labor survey. They also have no way at all of measuring accurately until they get complete annual tax return data, which they won't have for 2002 until later this year (while many will fall off the tax rolls altogether if they lived cheaply off of savings for a year). The #s don't reflect the "down-shifting" of family/household incomes for many.

Bush's father had the same juiced numbers game going on during his administration -- after he left office they "discovered" through revisions that the number of unemployed (meeting all the bureaucratic requirements to be counted in a short downturn) was off by 1 MILLION!

This time we have a very long economic downturn for certain industries, with MILLIONS falling into the statistical black hole of folks not actively looking for work in the past week (the aggregates -- and such numbers as the explosion in government payrolls -- are also camouflaging the fact that some industries are only just now coming out of great depressions). Watch for HUGE "revisions" in early 2005.

One of the big numbers most of the propagandists miss is that many companies didn't put older white collar workers out on unemployment -- they gave them buyouts (they are pre-62 "retired" or 62 and over and statistically retired - check out the surge in folks on SS). Some 2 out of 10 laid off in my company post 9/11 fit this track. They want to work, but had been waiting for the economy to turn around (and are now starting to look again). Is this significant and growing "aging of the workforce" phenomenon accurately reported on and factored into the labor surveys? No...

Moreover, the number of folks on disability (courtesy of lowered standards from the Clinton era) has sky-rocketed in the last decade (a program taken advantage of by many in this past downturn, so they show up here instead of unemployment rolls, because the monthly benefit is much higher and longer if they can qualify). It is a significant market and # changing phenomenon -- and the numbers in the program are HUGE today.

Another new phenomenon that these guys totally missed was a new class of liberty-minded professional who decided to skip altogether the unemployment rolls in favor of drawing down IRA savings. I personally know 3 who did just that after being laid off after 9/11 -- "Screw Socialism! I won't sell my soul for $10K that they stole from me to begin with" was the mantra. The dirty secret of the labor market surveys is that if you don't get in the program to start with, they aren't surveying you when you get "discouraged." Quite a few families had wives who dropped out of the work force and others who drew down IRAs (contributing to the outflows in 2001-2002). When Labor picks up on this phenomenon then I will know they FINALLY are publishing real economic analysis.

They are also playing funny with the numbers of new entrants in the workforce! Check out a time-series of the #s vs. demographic stats on the # of kids graduating. The way these shysters are playing with the stats you would think they are all going on for graduate degrees or just playing Nintendo at home instead of looking for work.

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