Should a person with 2 jobs be counted twice?
Why is there such a dramatic increase in us "consultants"?
Is it because government regulation has tilted the scale against the employee and in favor of the outsourced contractor?
Note also that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses two very different measures of jobs, and only one of those shows the low "32,000 new jobs" figure for July; the other shows I believe 600,000+ jobs.
Difference as I recall is the that the former method severely undercounts business start-ups and the self-employed.
Ok, but during the malaise of the Carter administration the economy added about 9 million jobs between inauguration and July of 1980. The growth rate was more than 10% from 80.7 million to 89.8 million.
Looking at recent presidents and similar time periods:
Reagan's first term 91.0 million to 94.8 million
Reagan's second term 96.3 mllion to 105.3 million
Bush I 107.1 million to 108.6 million
Clinton's first term 109.7 to 120.0 million
Clinton's second term 121.2 to 132.3 million
Spintreebob and I were going to post this for unspun, but I see NormalGuy beat us to the punch.
I have had 11 jobs since June 2001.
Unless people start counting the number of TEMP jobs in this country, all job numbers are suspect.
3 of those jobs are this year alone.