BUSH'S WAR ON JOBS

The Bush administration forecasted 300k/month job growth when it pushed the 2003 tax cuts. They predicted 300k/month job growth in their economic forecast early last month. (though in the meantime, as DeLong puts it, "administration officials have fled from the employment growth component of their own forecast as if it were some ravenous carniverous monster from a horror movie")

The job numbers for February? Just a wee bit shy.

America's unemployment rate remained stuck at 5.6 percent in February as the economy added a paltry 21,000 positions. The figures dramatized the relative scarcity of new jobs in a week in which President Bush shoved his re-election campaign into high gear.

The latest snapshot of the employment climate released by the Labor Department today depicted the painfully slow job growth the country has been enduring. The net gain in payrolls in February fell well short of the 125,000 jobs that economists had been forecasting.

Ouch! Even the figure forecasted by "economicsts" would have been disappointing, because it falls 20-30k jobs below what we would need to merely keep up with population growth. So 21,000 is downright dismal.

Also, if you remember, in early February Bush celebrated the release of the January job figures, which showed the US adding 112,000 jobs -- still a pretty paltry number -- saying that 366,000 jobs had been created "since August". (Of course, he said it as if it were a good number.) But even that 112k number is out the window:

Moreover, the job gains in January were revised to show a pickup of just 97,000 positions, down from the 112,000 first estimated a month ago.

And Bush can't earnestly trumpet the fact that unemployment didn't go up, because:

Nevertheless, the overall seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment rate stayed at 5.6 percent in February as thousands of prospective workers gave up looking for a job. Approximately 392,000 people left the civilian work force in February from January.

And those 392k are no long part of unemployment statistics.

So where's John Kerry on all of this? Has he grown "cautious"?

Slow job growth has been a sore spot for Bush. Presumptive Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry has seized upon this as evidence of what he contends is Bush's poor handling of the economy.

"At this rate the Bush administration won't create its first job for more than 10 years. Americans have a clear choice in this election,'' Kerry said. "They can either suffer with more and more job losses that rip the heart out of our economy or they can give George Bush a new job.''

Great line, and on short notice too. We need more good lines in this campaign, and this is a good start. Sure beats "lockbox".

And why is Don Evans promoting communism?

Commerce Secretary Don Evans said Bush "won't be satisfied until every American seeking work finds a job.''

But I kid I kid. Yes, "every American seeking work". Does that mean he has decided not to have any compassion for those who have become so frustrated in their search for a new job that they have left the work force altogether? Does this jive with the fact that the average period of unemployment per person is at its largest duration in 20 years?

Nevertheless, another Bush spokesman continues to place his rectum behind the microphone:

But White House spokesman Trent Duffy was more upbeat about the latest employment report. "This is a continuation of good news that the economy continues to grow and build new job creation,'' he said.

Did the Ministry of Plenty just say chocolate rations were being raised from 30 to 20? Duffy is trying the "greater than zero" strategy for trumpeting job figures.

Am I being an angry liberal who seeks to do a rain-dance on the economy because I am so blinded with hatred for Bush that I want to see him fail politically no matter what the cost?

No. So don't bother trying that.

UPDATE: It gets worse. Virtually all of the 21,000 new jobs were government jobs, meaning that private sector growth was just about zilch. And it gets even worse, as Kevin points out, when you look at the Household Employment Survey:

Oh, and remember the Household Employment Survey, the one that conservatives have all been claiming we should pay more attention to? (Not for any special reason, mind you — although they've invented a thousand and one ingenious theories to explain why we should — but simply because it shows a rosier job picture.) Well, according to the Household Survey we didn't even gain 21,000 jobs. Instead we lost 265,000. What's more, 588,000 more people dropped out of the labor force completely. Something tells me we're not going to be hearing much about the Household Survey for a while.

Ouch!