Friday, March 05, 2004

Read Bush's lips: No new jobs

"Abysmal," "awful," "pitiful," "meager" are the adjectives applied to this morning's Labor Department's report about jobs. Not only was the job-increase figure for February, 21,000, more than 125,000 lower than projected, the report also revised downward the two previous months' numbers, reducing the disappointing figure of January, 112,000, to 97,000; and of December, 16,000 to 8,000. Astoundingly, none of the 21,000 new jobs were in the private sector. They were government jobs.

These figures show that the economy is generating jobs at an astounding low rate, far lower than the monthly number (about 150,000) needed just to meet new entrants, and far slower than in any recovery in history.

The unemployment rate remained constant--because of huge drop-off in the number of persons seeking work.

Any other suggestions for adjectives?

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