Economic Recovery Indicators

Posted By Blackfive

Lately, I have gotten very sick of John Kerry, Howard Dean, even Dick Gephardt (who?), claiming that the Bush Administration is responsible for the loss of 3 million, no, wait, now it's 2.5 2.3 million jobs.

I’m angry that it’s come to this. I hate economics. The main problem is that you can prove anything statistically depending on methods and input. The Unemployment number is tough to discern because (1) people who stop looking for work after a period of time don't count (2) teen-agers are counted beginning at age sixteen and (3) seasonal data affects the percentage of Unemployed. Total job loss is tough to track, too.

Here's some data from the U.S Dept. of Labor:

Jobs lost in the first 8 months January 20th to September 11th is pegged at 1.2 million. How much of this is actually attributable to President Bush is the question. In April of 2001, the U.S. lost 423, 000 jobs. Can someone tell me exactly which policy was responsible for this?

Jobs were lost due to the teror attacks of September 11th (obvious ones like travel and lodging industry, aerospace, transportation). Boeing cut 30,000 jobs. New York City alone lost over 80,000 jobs due to the attack in the year after 9/11 . 22,000 jobs were in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. 800,000 jobs were lost in November and December of 2001.

The fact is that a lot of jobs were lost over the last few years for many reasons; however, it will be tough for Democrats to accurately pin them on the Bush Administration and not a world-wide recession, the dot-bomb bust, corporate corruption (Enron, World-Com) and 9/11.

Now, what about recovery?

The biggest indicator of an economic turn around, IMHO, is my place of employment. We were directed by our (very conservative) board to cut 20% across the company on October 1, 2001. I lead the IT Department. It didn’t matter if one department had a greater need or not, everyone had to cut 20%. This was a defensive reaction to September 11th. No one knew what would happen to the economy (which was already weak), and, when there is economic uncertainty, jobs get cut through various means - for example, hiring freezes and position consolidations. Also, think about your own spending after September 11th. Did you change your vacations, savings, will, retirement plan because of September 11th? I did. I put more into savings and spread it out among different banks. When you spend less money, less items are bought. When less items are bought, supply goes up and productivity goes down. When productivity goes down, jobs get cut.

My company is in the second quarter of strong hiring. While I'm not staffed to pre-9/11 levels, I'm getting close. If anything tells me we are ready for recovery, it's the fact that I am hiring more supervisors and managers.

Then, there's the fact that I've had two recruiters call me last week for opportunities (one was almost double what I make now). The economy will be a non-issue come November.

---

Mission: To protect and promote the reputation and dignity of America's Warriors.
Join us!

Comments

Economic Recovery Indicators

Lately, I have gotten very sick of John Kerry, Howard Dean, even Dick Gephardt (who?), claiming that the Bush Administration is responsible for the loss of 3 million, no, wait, now it's 2.5 2.3 million jobs.

I’m angry that it’s come to this. I hate economics. The main problem is that you can prove anything statistically depending on methods and input. The Unemployment number is tough to discern because (1) people who stop looking for work after a period of time don't count (2) teen-agers are counted beginning at age sixteen and (3) seasonal data affects the percentage of Unemployed. Total job loss is tough to track, too.

Here's some data from the U.S Dept. of Labor:

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfadb53ef00d83425ec6053ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Economic Recovery Indicators:

» China’s “resource curse” - cheap labor. from resource. They
to replace expensive elements such as platinum. Once China can produce these high tech substitutes it [Read More]