Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal reports that the CEA expects payroll employment to be revised upward by 400,000 or so on Friday:
WSJ.com - Political Debate Over Jobs Intensifies: In August, nonfarm payroll employment stood 913,000 jobs, or 0.8%, below the level when President Bush took office.... "This is a very preliminary estimate," said CEA spokesman Phillip Swagel, adding it was generated by an economic model with a typical statistical error range of plus or minus 140,000 jobs. "The only number that matters is the number that the BLS announces on Friday." The BLS will incorporate its revisions in the official data in February.... The CEA memo uses publicly available unemployment insurance records to calculate that employment from March 2003 through December 2003 grew by 288,000, or 32,000 per month, more than previously published BLS estimates. The memo says "it is tempting" to extrapolate the monthly figure out to March 2004, producing a total increase of 384,000. But it downplays the higher figure....
Even with positive revisions, Democrats probably will be able to attack Mr. Bush as the first president to oversee no net job creation since Herbert Hoover....
Not to mention slower real GDP growth than in ten of the last thirteen presidential terms! And a "Bush Boom" which turns out on closer examination to mean "faster growth than seen since 1999, or maybe 2000."
I had guessed that the upward payroll revision was likely to be some 200,000, but Phil Swagel is convincing: my guess is now up to 350,000 or so.*
Now Bush is not responsible for the fact that his first term will see payroll employment growth effectively flat. He is responsible for (falsely) selling his tax cuts as big short-term employment-generating job-creating boosters when that was not their main effect. And he is responsible for failing to put forward policies to guard against and alleviate the impact of the kind of bad business-cycle employment outcome that we have seen.
Indeed, the details of Bush's tax cuts--heavily weighted toward the rich, focused on reducing the taxation of income for capital--are powerful evidence against the common theory among Democrats that Karl Rove is king. In the summer and fall of 2002, Karl Rove must have been asking questions like, "What will the jobs situation look like in October 2004?" "Is there a chance that the jobs situation will be much lousier than the forecast suggests?" And "What can we do to guard against such a bad outcome?" And the failure of the administration to pursue a substantial Keynesian stimulus in 2002-2003--when it was clear that the Federal Reserve regarded itself as very short of dry powder--is powerful evidence that Rove was ignored. I've swung over to the belief that it's not political calculation, but ideology and chance--which advisor with which pet project happens to push Bush's hot button just before he makes his underbriefed seat-of-the-pants snap decision.
*Which would still leave payroll employment some 1.4 million short of where the administration forecast released last February said it would be by now.
Posted by DeLong at October 5, 2004 04:54 PM | TrackBackIs there a good chance of this happening, or is it just a guess? And will people buy the claim that the labor market is really rosy when it's kind of not so great?
Posted by: Brian at October 5, 2004 05:00 PMSurprise, surprise, things are actually a lot worse than both the CEA and Labor are telling you. Wot a shock.
Bush's crows are coming home to roost and Pres. Kerry may have to live with them.
Posted by: Melanie at October 5, 2004 05:21 PMSo is this a regular revision released by the BLS at this time ? Or is this being .. ahem .. released at an unusual time for political reasons ?
Posted by: rg at October 5, 2004 05:33 PMAnd THAT's with a greatly devalued dollar.
If our savings and wages hadn't been devalued, where would employment be?
Posted by: sal at October 5, 2004 05:51 PMthe adjustment is always made in october...
Posted by: sampo at October 5, 2004 06:00 PMReal Boom Times, give me a break.
Job-cutting jumped in September
Companies set highest number of cuts since January while hiring plans tumbled.
October 5, 2004: 2:41 PM EDT
by Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money senior writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The number of job cuts planned by U.S. employers jumped in September to the highest level in eight months while hiring announcements fell sharply, a job search firm said Tuesday.
The report came just days before the government's critical gauges of unemployment and job growth in September, but did little to clarify how strong those measures would be.
U.S. businesses announced 107,863 job cuts in September, up from 74,150 job cuts in August, a gain of 45.5 percent, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which keeps track of monthly job-cut announcements.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/05/news/economy/challenger/index.htm
Posted by: me at October 5, 2004 06:16 PMCan we please, pretty please, hammer the fact that the US economy adds 150,000 NEW POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES EVERY MONTH?
*THAT* is our baseline, dammit.
Posted by: Chris at October 5, 2004 07:51 PMKerry is promising to pay for many of his programs with a rollback of Bush tax cuts. This could set up a showdown with a GOP Delay Congress and nothing would get done.
Posted by: bakho at October 5, 2004 08:35 PMTo provide some broader context: this sort of failure to create jobs routinely happens during Republican administrations. In the 19 Presidential administrations since 1929 Dem admininstrations have created an average of 4 jobs/100 Americans -- Republicans have done 1/4 as well, creating 1 job for every 100 Americans. Obviously George Bush is below average even by the Republicans' very modest standards -- he's one of only 2 Presidents ever to turn in a net job loss.
But Republicans are bad for the economy in broader terms: remember the Santa-Clara study of a few years ago, which finds that excess value-weighted, annualized stock market growth (S&P, corrected for T-bill) has averaged 11% under Dems, but only 0% (!!) under Republicans.
The bottom line: voting Republican hits your wallet hard.
Posted by: jim at October 6, 2004 12:28 AMJim,
Your factoid is too juicy to let it alone. Source? Did you do the calculation or find the results elsewhere?
It fits right in with poverty up, health care coverage down, job growth miserable, while the rich get tax cuts. Help me complete the picture.
Posted by: kharris at October 6, 2004 05:17 AMSee my diary at http://davev.dailykos.com for metholodogical details --
I've run a quickie robust linear regression of BLS monthly employment change as a function of 1-period lagged BLS, and both current and 1-period lagged Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced layoffs. (The CG&C numbers for Sep were released yesterday and were terrible)
The prediction is roughly 84,000 jobs with a standard error of 21,000 (meaning a 95% forecast interval of about 44,000-124,000).
This will be disappointing job creation at best. Prepare to hammer home the message that we NEED 150,000 jobs per month to stay afloat. Remember, anything less than 150,000 means a "real LOSS of employment opportunities in America."
Do not let him mislead the public by claiming the BLS numbers are good. Do not let him mislead by pointing to the rumored upwards-revisions.
Posted by: DaveV at October 6, 2004 10:32 AMSee my diary at http://davev.dailykos.com for metholodogical details --
I've run a quickie robust linear regression of BLS monthly employment change as a function of 1-period lagged BLS, and both current and 1-period lagged Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced layoffs. (The CG&C numbers for Sep were released yesterday and were terrible)
The prediction is roughly 84,000 jobs with a standard error of 21,000 (meaning a 95% forecast interval of about 44,000-124,000).
This will be disappointing job creation at best. Prepare to hammer home the message that we NEED 150,000 jobs per month to stay afloat. Remember, anything less than 150,000 means a "real LOSS of employment opportunities in America."
Do not let him mislead the public by claiming the BLS numbers are good. Do not let him mislead by pointing to the rumored upwards-revisions.
Posted by: DaveV at October 6, 2004 10:33 AM"Do not let him mislead the public by claiming the BLS numbers are good. Do not let him mislead by pointing to the rumored upwards-revisions."
Kerry needs to know this, cold, for the debate Friday.
Obviously this administration has had from the beginning a policy of redistribution of jobs and wealth. They chased the little guy out of the stockmarket, shipped his job overseas and don't count him as unemployed if he sells some sunglasses on eBay, in fact.. they count such a wretch as a potential employer. Gall!.
Presented with the fact that 1 mmillion people have descende into the ranks of the poverty stricken in 4 years and that the administration wants to do away with such niceties as the EIC our vice President can only respond proudly about how 5 million have been removed from the tax rolls altogether. That's 5 million off the grid, not even making enough to file. That is a good thing????
Obviously this administration has had from the beginning a policy of redistribution of jobs and wealth. They chased the little guy out of the stockmarket, shipped his job overseas and don't count him as unemployed if he sells some sunglasses on eBay, in fact.. they count such a wretch as a potential employer. Gall!.
Presented with the fact that 1 million people have descende into the ranks of the poverty stricken in 4 years and that the administration wants to do away with such niceties as the EIC our vice President can only respond proudly about how 5 million have been removed from the tax rolls altogether. That's 5 million off the grid, not even making enough to file. That is a good thing????
I guess it keeps them from asking for that EIC.