Fortune asks "Is America in a jobless recovery?" Bush's answer: No.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Curb Our Enthusiasm: May Job Growth is a Downer

The U.S. added only 78,000 new jobs last month, and many were in the housing sector, which some economists think is ripe for a correction.

By Peronet Despeignes

We now return to our regularly scheduled job bust. The Labor Department on Friday reported that the total number of nonfarm payroll jobs grew in May by only 78,000 last month, half of what many economists were predicting, and less than a third of April's surprisingly robust 274,000 gain. This dashes—at least temporarily—investors' cautious optimism of late about the economy's strength.

Preliminary month-to-month figures, which can be revised substantially, have to be looked at with a jaundiced eye. Job growth in May could turn out to have been much stronger and smoother in future updates. But any revision is unlikely to change a basic fact: This is the most anemic job expansion since World War II. By the standard of past booms, job growth since the end of the 2001 recession should have been double to six times better than what we've seen so far. (For more details, see graph Job Growth: The Phantom Economic Expansion.)

Adding to the uncertainty about the soundness and the stamina of the country's economic recovery is the fact that much of the job growth is in the housing and health-care sectors. A whopping 48% of private-sector jobs created since the end of the recession in November 2001—almost one out of every two—was housing related, according to Labor Department data culled by analyst Sophia Koropeckyj at Economy.com, a research firm. And in recent weeks, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has described the housing market as "frothy."

And while the unemployment rate in May dipped to 5.1%, its lowest level in more than three years, much of that decline over the past year reflects an exodus of Americans who've officially stopped looking for work and are therefore not defined as unemployed. The number of factory jobs, and even the number of consulting, temporary, and other business-service jobs shrank last month. Not good.

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,1068857,00.html?cnn=yes

MEANWHILE, in Junior's World:



http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/2005060...

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. America's economy is on the right track. Over the past two years, we've added more than 3.5 million new jobs. More Americans are working today than ever before. Home ownership is at an all time high. Small businesses are flourishing. Factory output is growing. And families are taking home more of what they earn.

These are hopeful signs for our economy, and we must work hard to sustain that prosperity.

[AllegroRondo]

1. "And the chocolate ration has increased to 25 grams"

[kliljedahl]

2. I find whitehouse.org to be more reliable than whitehouse.gov

http://www.whitehouse.org


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. Isn't it funny how the truth on that web site is somehow..."true-er?"

My only complaint about whitehouse.org, if you can call it a complaint, is that some of their stuff that I'd LOVE to post here is the kind of material that usually results in locked threads.

I'd place The Onion, whitehouse.org, and Weekly World News on the same level. All three KILL on a regular basis.

:evilgrin:

:toast:

[newswolf56]

4. When 2 Allegedly Equals 6...

This administration's manipulation of unemployment figures is truly Orwellian: like waiting until everyone in a given locale has starved to death, then announcing "great news: we've ended death by starvation." Same principle applies to Bush Administration job policies in general: outsource America, then when people are forced back to work at one-third their former pay, hail the creation of "new jobs" and call it "full employment."

I'm not sure which is more troubling: the economic reality itself, or the plutocracy's sneering let-them-eat-cake scorn -- unprecedented since the Great Depression.

[MsTryska]

5. frothy?

what the hell does that mean in relation to Housing?

[mcscajun]

7. He's ducking the "Bubble is about to burst"

by saying things are "frothy" instead.

It's gonna go POP any time now.

[MsTryska]

8. ah....a metaphor taken too far then.

thanks!

[PurityOfEssence]

6. It's jobless and it's not a recovery

It's just part of the ongoing make richer Americans richer project.

They're looters. They don't maintain the infrastructure and don't prepare for the future, while not even keeping up with current accounts. Parasites don't make sure their hosts survive, and they die as a result.

[leesa]

9. How did all these economy "experts" get to be so irrational?