When no news is bad news
Washington Times -- Don Lambro, senior national political reporter
The national news media's politically driven bashing of the economy didn't end on Election Day. It continues in the business news pages and much of the reporting from Wall Street, despite a bullish post-election rally in the financial markets and economic numbers that would make any of our trading partners proud.
Adjectives such as "mediocre" or "lackluster" or "weak" or "sluggish" are being used in the business reporting columns to describe an economy that in fact is growing at about 4 percent, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's third quarter revision of the Gross Domestic Product. Since when is 4 percent GDP growth "mediocre" or "lackluster?" Europe is barely achieving 1-2 percent. They would be dancing in the streets in Japan if they had such growth.
Up since the election are the stock market, consumer confidence, retail sales and industrial activity. What is down is unemployment. Perhaps the best indication of how Americans measure the economy and their own financial situation, President Bush's job approval score is at 53 percent.
True, earlier this month the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy created 112,000 new payroll jobs in November -- a number that disappointed Wall Street, which had expected 200,000. The newspapers and TV news shows, of course, reported this as bad news, worrying that it pointed to a downturn in the economy.
The usual suspects were trotted before the cameras to say that the jobs number had to reach at least 150,000 jobs a month to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.
What was not reported was that the October payroll survey showed 303,000 jobs were created, following 119,000 jobs created in September. Simple math shows that the economy has created 534,000 jobs in the past three months. That's a monthly average of well over 150,000. Including the benchmark revision of the payroll survey that was released in October, which showed that many more jobs had been created over the past year than the initial monthly survey had suggested, 2.4 million new payroll jobs have been created since August of last year.
The bottom line is that there have been 15 straight months of payroll job growth and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.4 percent. Compare that to the nearly 10 percent jobless rate in Europe. Back to you, Dan. |
