they were expecting how many jobs???

[angrychair]

The Republicans came to Tampa to deliver a simple message about Obama: "We left him a total mess, but he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in."

President Bill Clinton at the 2012 DNC



The August Employment Survey was 96,000. Whoever "they" are said they were expecting 135,000 jobs to be created in August. If you listened to the media or Romney than you would think this was the worst month ever and the entire U.S. economy was falling apart. There was almost an underlying glee in Romney’s tone when he spoke about the jobs report. Romney states the following, with no qualifiers or stipulations:

“My plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs by the end of my first term”

That is an interesting number. 12,000,000 jobs. A presidential term is 4 years. Hmmmm, doing the math, the arithmetic as former President Clinton mentioned, would mean that Romney would have to create an average of 250,000 jobs a month, EVERY MONTH, for his entire presidency. Now, here is how unlikely that is, there has been only 5 years out of the last 50 years that we have EVER averaged 250,000 jobs an month for a entire year: 1977, ‘78, ‘84, ‘94 and ’97 were the only years that happened in. It is not only hyperbole and fantasy to suggest such a thing but for a Yale MBA and life-long businessman, it is outright disingenuous and crude to put forth such a statement knowing that such numbers are empirically impossible to achieve.

Second, 96,000 jobs created in August is the best August jobs report since 2006. Guess what the August job report was for 2009? It was a job loss of 231,000. Guess what it was for August of 2008? It was a job loss of 274,000.


So, at the end of the day, is this jobs report, in its totality, something to whistle and stomp about? No, there are a lot of people out of work. There are many parts of the country that could be doing a lot better. Despite that, the fact of the matter is that, as a country, we are doing better:

2009:


DJIA: March of 2009 it was 6626


Jobs: lost avg. of 421,000/month


Unemployment rate: avg. of 9.2%



2012 (so far):


DJIA: August of 2012 it is 13,306


Jobs: created an avg. 139,000 a month


Unemployment rate: avg. of 8.1%

[Heather MC]

1. maybe Romney is speaking in reverse. I bet you 10,000 dollars

romney could average 250,000 jobs lost every month for 4 years straight!

[doc03]

2. Don't confuse us with facts. n/t

[zbdent]

3. Don't forget ... for the "liberally-biased media", 96K jobs under Bush43

was "doing pretty well" ...

[Igel]

4. Perhaps. For some.

Mostly they pointed out that it was less than what was needed for keeping up with population growth.

Anything less than 250k/month on DU was reprehensible, and some set their goals for * at 300k/month. It's doable. The generalization is that sharp downturns yield sharp upturns. If you lose 800k jobs, you don't expect to regain jobs at 250k/month for a year. If you lose 5 million jobs, you do.

It's the same with stock market crashes and recoveries.

Unemployment was low under * primarily because of decreased work force participation. That accounts for a couple of percent. Job creation was less than necessary but it was masked. It was still probably as high or higher than under Obama. The problem is endpoints. Things like tech or housing bubbles take a lot of set up and spread responsibility all over the place. The roots of the tech bubble are in the '80s. The roots of the housing bubble are in the '90s.

The decrease in workforce participation accelerated since 2009. Now it accounts for about 3%.