Dems, Media not giving full jobs picture

[TitanTiger 21,241]

Job Growth Description

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.                                         

Published 3/11/2004 12:06:21 AM                                               

WASHINGTON -- Recently I have been making my own scholarly contribution to political scientists' understanding of the 2004 election by identifying a rising new constituency within the electorate, the moron vote. Those who compose it are the angry, the fearful, and the unaccountably neurotic...

       

...Yet Senator Kerry has to cast his net more widely if he is to give the Bush of his tirades the promised heave-ho. Thus he now goes beyond anger and personal braggadocio to speak of economics and foreign policy. In doing so he is not merely addressing our country's morons. He is addressing the understandably confused. For whatever reason in addressing them he merely adds to their confusion. Possibly he too is understandably confused. He sees hostilities in Iraq that have gone on beyond four months and cannot understand why our troops are not en route home. Certainly his experience in war lasted only four months and then it was homeward bound. He sees an economy that is growing at a brisk 4% or more and sees economic despair. He is the perfect candidate for the understandably confused...

...As for the economy, its robust growth suggests that job growth must be strong also. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data declaring job growth is low, only 21,000 new jobs in February as opposed to the forecasted 125,000. Are these statistics sound? Senator Kerry does not ask that question, but some economists are asking it. One, Brian Wesbury, a man distinguished for his reading of economic trends and business achievement, has looked carefully at the economy and found job growth where others have failed to look.

Wesbury claims that in the New Economy, invigorated as it is by developments in software and technology that make founding small businesses more feasible, job creation is missed by the old way of measuring it. The old way was through the job survey called the Establishment Survey. The new way is through the survey called the Household Survey. The Establishment Survey takes into account business establishments nationwide by measuring payroll employment. "But," writes Wesbury in the April issue of The American Spectator, "payrolls are not where the action is today. The real growth is entrepreneurial. Self-employment and Limited Liability Corporations (LLC) are growing like weeds, and these types of employment do not fit into the normal payroll." They do fit into the Household Survey.

Whereas the Establishment Survey tells us that since the end of the recession in November 2001 payroll jobs have declined by 718,000, the Household Survey indicates 1.9 million jobs have been created. Naturally, Senator Kerry, the candidate of confusion, relies on the Establishment Survey. I doubt he has ever paid any attention to the Household Survey.

Wesbury believes that he should. It not only calculates job growth more accurately than the other survey it also has tracked a trend. For two decades self-employment has represented an ever larger percentage of post-recession job growth. In the months following the 1982 recession self-employment accounted for 5.4% of job growth. In the months following the 1991 recession it accounted for 9.3% of job growth. "Since the recession ended in November 2001," Wesbury writes, "total household employment has climbed 2.1 million and self-employment has grown by 644,000….31.1% of all job growth in the Household Survey."

Is it possible to have the healthy growth we now have and a decline in jobs? The understandably confused are confused by this as well they should be. If Wesbury is right, the confusion is caused by economic statisticians' failure to keep up with our dynamic economy. The economy is growing and so is the job market.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6269

Don't hold your breath waiting for Kerry or the DNC to acknowledge this or the media to press them on it. It doesn't fit the campaign strategy to tell the truth by giving the full picture.

[TitanTiger 21,241]

Wow, no comment from the left-wing peanut gallery?

[Tiger in Spain 0]

I was just noticing that as well. MoveOn.org's website must be down for maintenance, and they have no other place to receive their daily load of horsecrap.

[TitanTiger 21,241]

bump

[TitanTiger 21,241]

Slowly, but surely, the funny business the Dems are pulling on the jobs picture is getting out. Now if someone could just educate the mainstream media on what's happening, we'll really be getting somewhere:

Lying Is Job One

If Krugman & Co. ever told the truth, they’d be finished.   

Why does Paul Krugman lie about the economy? For the same reason that many liberal politicians do: If they told the truth, they’d never be elected into office. But when they lie, their chances of victory are greatly improved.

Here’s the truth about what has happened to the American economy over the last year:

Since the stock market bottom one year ago last Friday, the S&P 500 has grown $2.96 trillion in market value. Corporate earnings are now at an all-time record high. Gross domestic product has grown somewhere between 5 and 6 percent. Household wealth is at an all-time record high. Interest rates are the lowest in modern history. Inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index is non-existent. Jobs have grown between 122,000 (according to the Department of Labor's “establishment survey”) and 983,000 (according to the “household survey”), and the unemployment rate has fallen from 5.9 to 5.6 percent.

These impressive economic statistics are largely the result of growth policies enacted by the Bush administration.

The liberal response? Ignore all this good news and invent a jobs crisis. Convince Americans that they shouldn’t be fooled by the fact they have jobs. Say that the jobs they have are just temporary illusions. Let Americans know that at any moment their jobs will be “outsourced” to India...

...Of course, Paul Krugman  —  America's most dangerous liberal pundit  —  has been doing his ample share of the lying. In his Friday column for the New York Times there are a couple of howlers.

First, Krugman lies to make his case for a jobs crisis  —  even though the unemployment rate is 5.6 percent. Bear in mind that 5.6 percent is nothing unusual. It is precisely the long-term average since the statistic was first compiled in 1948. It is lower that it was, on average, during President Clinton’s first term, and precisely the same as it was at this point of Clinton’s first term. If there is anything unusual about 5.6 percent, it’s that it is dangerously close to the 5.5 percent level that Krugman himself once claimed was indicative of excessive employment pointing to inflation.

Krugman says in Friday's column:

"But wait  —  hasn't the unemployment rate fallen since last summer? Yes, but that's entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force."

Krugman is referring to the fact that the unemployment rate is the fraction of the labor force that is unemployed. He's claiming that the unemployment rate has fallen not because there have been new jobs created, but "entirely" because the labor force has gotten smaller.

The truth is that both have happened. The unemployment rate is calculated by the Department of Labor's “household survey,” which shows clearly that jobs have increased at the same time as the labor force has shrunk. Krugman is not clear exactly what he means by “since last summer,” but no matter which summer month we take as the starting point, jobs have increased and the labor force has shrunk. It’s a flat-out bald-faced lie to claim that the drop in the unemployment rate is “entirely the result of people dropping out of the labor force.”

Will the Times print a correction? Don’t hold your breath.

Krugman's second lie concerns the content of President Bush's economic policy. Berating the administration because its tax cuts, “mainly for those at the top … failed to deliver the promised jobs,” he harks back to policy suggestions he made in an October 2002 Times column:

"…I called for extended unemployment benefits, temporary aid to state and local governments, and rebates for low- and middle-income workers. Maybe this more or less textbook response to a depressed economy wouldn't have worked. But we'll never know, because the administration rejected all such proposals."

Krugman Truth Squad members Bruce Bartlett and Jon Henke (of the Q-and-O blog) nailed this one before the ink was dry. Not only has the administration not “rejected all such proposals,” it has signed “all such proposals” into law. Here’s Henke:

Extend Unemployment benefits:  Bush did that … Temporary aid to state and local governments: The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 increased that by $20 billion ... Rebates for low- and middle-income workers: The Jobs and Growth Act of 2003 included rebates for child tax credits. Granted, these policies may not have been implemented precisely as Paul Krugman would have liked (i.e., by a Democrat)...but they were implemented.

Will the Times print a correction? Don't hold your breath.

But here’s the more important question: When will voters start rebelling against lies like this? So far these lies are making it possible for the Democrats to resurrect Bill Clinton’s old strategy: “It’s the economy, stupid!” If the electorate falls for it this time, though, it’ll be a case of something else entirely: “It’s not the economy, we’re just stupid.”

—  Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm. He welcomes your comments at don@trendmacro.com.

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/...00403150933.asp

[TitanTiger 21,241]

bump