Bush-economy job performance this year: 90% worse than it should be to keep up with population growth

This is a reprise in part and update of a recent post (“Was BLS forced to drink the Kool-Aid?”), and a few before it, prompted by the weak jobs report today. In its on-line retrievable statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. working-age population grew by 2.1 million in the 8 months from December 2006 to August. In recent years when the economy was healthy – i.e., during Clinton’s second term – almost exactly two-thirds of the working-age population (66.7 %, for a refresher for the math-challenged) participated in the work force, either by holding a job or actively looking for one by established BLS criteria. (Keep in mind that a one percentage point difference in the participation rate, even a tenth of a percentage point, is a lot of people, about 2.5 million for the former, 250,000 for the latter.)

When employment is really strong, that labor-force participation rate tends to go even higher. It was over 67% back in January 2001, and it has exceeded 70% in parts of the country with high literacy and low levels of poverty. That gives you a pretty good idea of how many really would like to have a job if they were readily available and education-levels match up. As you hear the monthly jobs reports, keep that little (but important) factoid in mind – about two-thirds or more of the added members of the working-age population should get employed based on historical experience .-- . BLS officially estimates the working-age population has been growing by something over 200,000 per month -- actually by 250,000 last month. Month in and month-out, on average, a decently-humming economy should be generating between 165,000-170,000 new jobs, or about 67% of those entering the working age population.

Let’s look at 2007 to date. If the economy were as healthy as the opinion-makers like to say, at least 1.4 million new jobs should have been generated from December to August just to stay even. The census Bureau reports 116,000 more jobs in August compared to December. That’s 8% of the working-age population growth, not 67%. A bit of a difference there. So what happened to the other 90% of the new working age population who usually participate, i.e., the 1.3 million who should have been working? Magically, they all just gave up, quit the workforce or decided not to enter it – with the convenient upshot that the Bush administration can still report a steady official unemployment rate of 4.6%. That’s the only figure the business media care about or understand, or if neither of the foregoing actually applies, the only one they will bother to report.

And by the way: since December, part-time jobs grew by almost 300,000. That's a lot more than the total job growth of 116,000. If you think about it, that means almost 200,000 full-time jobs were converted to part-time, and that full-time work actually declined in raw numbers, much less in real terms when mere population growth is considered. Since January 2001, part-time has grown by 1.2 million.

These numbers, combined with undoubted administration awareness that the press can only handle the big ones like GDP and the unemployment rate, make it hard to believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics has not been compromised by this hyper-politicized administration. I wish somebody with some clout would at least start asking the pertinent questions.

P.S. For would-be right-wing wonks who would challenge these numbers, because there have been methodology changes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they would result in minor adjustments but the basic point continues to apply: in this economy that is trumpeted to be "strong" and "vibrant," working-class Americans sure ain't seeing the benefits in readily-available jobs. Quite the contrary, in fact.

P.S. No. 2. Sure, it's all Clinton's fault.