Hi All,
For those interested in following the failure of Bush's economic policy, consider perusing
www.jobwatch.org .
Job Watch is tracking monthly the net creation of jobs as promised by the Bush administration in justifying huge tax cuts for the wealthy.
The results so far, a dismal failure. By Bush's own projections he is down by 437,000 jobs that his policies were specifically targeted to create.
Remember, as previously reported, Bush supports corporate outsourcing and the shipment of good paying American jobs overseas, apparently as fast as possible.
Does anyone else smell a rat?
Excerpts from Job Watch follow.
Enjoy
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www.jobwatch.org "Bush Administration’s tax cuts falling short in job creation
The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which took effect in July 2003, its “Jobs and Growth Plan.” The president’s economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents), projected that the plan would raise the level of growth enough to create 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—344,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. Last month, August 2003, the jobs and growth plan fell 437,000 jobs short of the administration’s projection."
"Greatest employment contraction since the Great Depression
Since the recession began 29 months ago in March 2001, 3.3 million private sector jobs have disappeared, a 2.9% contraction. 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, a 1.1% contraction. 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. (See State Data and Organizations for more information on your state.)"
(From testimony provided by Bush analysts in Senate hearings)
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_jobs_growth_testimony Second, a better indicator of labor market slack is the severe loss of jobs, especially private sector jobs. The newly revised data reveal that private-sector employment has fallen by 3.1 million jobs in this downturn. This is a 2.8% employment decline, far larger than in any other post-war recession.
Another important dimension of the jobless recovery is long-term unemployment. The fact that the number of unemployed far outpace the number of job vacancies (by about 3 to 1, according to the BLS vacancy survey) has led to recessionary levels of unemployment spells. The most recent data from April and May 2003 show that the average unemployment spell was, respectively, 19.6 and 19.2 weeks in length. These are as high as the mean duration of unemployment spells in the deeper recessions of the 1980s and 1990s.
This new problem—real wage decline—is our fourth indicator of current labor market weakness. Despite the fact that unemployment began to rise in late 2000, there was enough momentum left over from the full employment/fast productivity growth environment of the latter 1990s to keep earnings rising into 2001, when real weekly wages grew 2.5% at the median. But persistently high unemployment has now caught up to wage growth. Last year, nominal wage growth slowed by 1 to 1.5%, and, with the higher inflation that lasted through the first quarter of this year, this has led to real wage declines. These real losses are occurring throughout the wage scale, reaching high, middle and low wage workers.
