Last Pre-Election Jobs Report Released

September's jobs report notes a gain of 96,000 jobs, and a downward revision for August from 144,000 to 128,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.4% (about even to Nixon's and Clinton's when they were reelected), while another 236,000 jobs were added in a periodic revision to the total, leaving Bush at a deficit of 585,000 jobs from where he started. If he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term, he will net positive job growth. The effects of the recent hurricanes were not possible to determine at this point, the report said. This will surely be featured prominently in tonight's second Presidential debate (starting at 9 p.m. Eastern).

Comments

Damned statistics at work.

[Doc Ruby]

From the actual report:

"Total employment was about unchanged in September at 139.5 million, and the employment-population ratio--the proportion of the population age 16 and over with jobs--was little changed at 62.3 percent. Over the month, the civilian labor force was essentially unchanged at 147.5 million. The labor force participation rate was 65.9 percent in September and has been at or near that level since late last year. (See table A-1.)"

Bush and his apologists can spin these numbers any way they want, as they define "unemployment" to exclude all kinds of people without jobs. How many of those "new jobs" Bush will talk about are jobs left idle by the thousands of reservists in Iraq and elsewhere? We've got 293M people in the US, with only 66.9% aged 15-65; even these numbers lie, somehow saying we've got 4.6% without jobs, compared with the still-rosy 5.4% summarized in the report. How many of these jobs are part time? How many pay too little to matter? How many are people working past their retirement age because they've lost their pensions, or their investments? We remember what the job market was like "when Clinton was reelected" in 1996: jobs were falling off the trees. Now, they're flying overseas, where the labor, environment and pay conditions are already in the cesspool into which Bush is herding this economy. Do your career a favor and see through these lies, and get someone new to manage the economy on which we depend, who hasn't been a miserable lying failure all his life.