:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, January 10, 2004 ::

JobWatch:

"Year ends with Bush projections falling far short of actual job growth

While campaigning for last year's tax bill, which had large long-term revenue losses favoring the wealthy, President Bush regularly claimed that the tax cuts would remedy the biggest problem facing the country: two years of job losses. Today's job numbers for December 2003 provide a benchmark for evaluating these promises.

The president specifically promised that the tax bill would generate an additional 510,000 jobs by the end of 2003, growth above and beyond the jobs that an economy in recovery would naturally generate. In fact, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) projected that, with no change in policy, the resilient U.S. economy would generate a baseline of 4.1 million jobs by the end of 2004, even without the tax cut. (That baseline 3% gain in jobs was modest compared to earlier recovery periods without tax cuts: job growth was 4% over a comparable period of time following the early 1990s recession.) The CEA explained that, on top of that baseline job growth, the tax bill would add 510,000 jobs by the end of 2003 and a total of 1.4 million more jobs by the end of 2004. All told, the Bush Administration projected growth of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004 if its tax cuts were adopted, or an average growth rate of 306,000 jobs a month from July 2003 to December 2004.

The December 2003 job gain of 1,000 is a staggering 305,000 jobs below the promised monthly increase. In fact, job growth has never reached even a third of the promised rate of 306,000 jobs a month since the tax cut was implemented in July 2003."

So much for all those jobs we were gonna get...

:: Jim Nichols 1/10/2004 07:12:00 PM [+] ::
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