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Job Growth Question
As many of you may know, November's job growth wasn't exactly stellar, and the previous 2 months have been downgraded a little bit as well:
| quote: | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A surprisingly soft 112,000 new U.S. jobs were created in November, the Labor Department said on Friday, casting a shadow across an already downbeat holiday sales season with consumers apparently worried by scarce work and high oil prices.
The November figure -- the weakest since July -- came in well below Wall Street economists' forecasts for 180,000 new jobs, though the unemployment rate eased to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent in October.
In a further sign the labor market is improving only slowly, the Labor Department lowered its estimates for job growth in both September and October.
October's gain was marked down to 303,000 from an originally reported 337,000-job increase. The department cut September's total to 119,000 from 139,000.
The battered U.S. dollar came under renewed pressure immediately after the jobs data, losing more ground against the euro. Bond prices rallied on hopes the number might brake the rate at which the Federal Reserve raises U.S. interest rates but stock futures fell on worries about potential profit pain.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....storyID=6989807 |
This brings up a question I have. Back in February of this year, Bush's Council of Economic Advisors issued a report on the impact of Bush's 2003 tax cut proposal:
http://www.jobwatch.org/creating/bk...cro_effects.pdf
Now in that report the CEA projects an increase of 306,000 jobs with the tax cut. While we all know how far that number is off with our net gain monthly average, that's not what interests me. What DOES interest me, however, is that the CEA predicted a monthly average gain of 228,000 jobs without Bush's 2003 tax cut.
So that leads to 2 possibilities here:
1. Was the CEA being wildly and fallaciously optimistic (which tends to fall in line with many of Bush's policies in general)?
-or-
2. Has Bush's tax cuts actually done the opposite of what is projected? IOW, have Bush's tax cuts actually hurt job growth?
Just throwin' this out there for anyone.
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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