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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (561203)	4/7/2004 2:36:29 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The 'Great' Employment Report: "How could non-farm payrolls explode 308k when a) the unemployment rate increased to 5.7%; b) wage growth was less than expected at 0.1%; c) the 'employed population ratio' actually FELL to 62.1% from 62.2%; d) the 'employment participation rate' was unchanged at 65.9%; e) total employment was unchanged at 138.3m and most importantly f) the avg workweek fell 0.1 to 33.7, which is near a 40-year low (33.5)! (See table A-1.) "When dissecting the numbers we learned that NSA service job wages fell 8 cents and they accounted for 230k of the 308k job growth. Leisure & hospitality wages NSA fell 4 cents; and NSA avg hours worked fell 0.3. Something is obviously wrong. Healthcare contributed 36k jobs, leisure & hospitality 28k, retail 47k, government created 31k and the phantom jobs estimated to be created by small business was 153k! This is now known as the business birth/death rate. Apparently a large number of workers entered the workforce in order to force the unemployed rate higher, but still something seemed incredibly wrong. "After the close, our good friend and astute, no nonsense economist, ex-Fed official and investment adviser (at Van Hoisington Management), Lacy Hunt, provided the answers to the conundrum. Of the 308k jobs created, 296k are temporary or part-time jobs! "Let us repeat and let's be very clear, almost all jobs created in what is heralded as a great employment report are part-time jobs. "'In March, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons increased to 4.7 million, about the same level as in January. These individuals indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.' People want full-time but can't find it. Lacy opines that Congress did not renew unemployment benefits so many people took whatever they could get. This accounts for the surge in people entering the workforce." dailyreckoning.com