GOP Heritage FD. says Dem problem is "an outdated definition of a job."

[papau]

New York Times Heritage Foundation: "reason to doubt the numbers from the payroll survey" because "they give a misleading picture of the 2004 economy."...the work force of 2004 can no longer be measured by an outdated definition of a job."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/opinion/07KANE.html

Labor's Lost Jobs

By TIM KANE- WASHINGTON — Friday brought good news on the economic front, with the Labor Department reporting that 308,000 jobs were added last month. But total payroll employment still appears sickly if one looks back over the last three years. There have been two million jobs lost since March 2001. Or have there?

It depends, as usual, on which statistics you use. And there is reason to doubt the numbers from the payroll survey, which the Labor Department has used since 1939, because they give a misleading picture of the 2004 economy.

<snip>The sharpest contrast can be seen by looking at the Labor Department's household survey, which shows a record high level of total employment. This survey reported an employment level of 138.3 million as of March — 600,000 more working Americans since President Bush took office in 2001.<snip>

An even bigger problem with the payroll survey is the evolution of what constitutes work. We can think of the payroll survey as counting all workers at traditional firms, plus some workers at start-up companies who have payroll records. But the payroll survey doesn't count individuals who are self-employed — despite the fact that their ranks have surged by at least 650,000 in just two years.<Snip>

Tim Kane is a research fellow in macroeconomics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

[swag]

1. Right, the payroll survey ignores

Taking out the trash on Tuesdays and cleaning out the litter box on Saturdays.

Democrats are calling "chores" what should now be called "jobs."

[LittleApple81]

2. The number of self-employed???? Or self removed from the job market

and making do with whatever? I remember that in Argentina the "self-employed" were having "garage-sales" of anything they could strip from their homes in order to eat. Is this the type of "self employed" they are talking about?

[grannylib]

3. "Outdated definition of a job?????" what kind of wordy

bullshit is that???
Oh...you mean, like something that PAYS enough to live on??? Outdated, huh?
Yeah, under BushCo, that's probably very true.

[XanaDUer]

5. Outdated definitions re JOBS:

1. "Living wage"- an old-fashioned concept that needs to be stamped out NOW!

2. Outsourcing-a way to keep the prices of goods down. Ignore the fact that no one will be able to afford said "cheaper" products due to lack of a job, because it was outsourced.

3. Bennies-Fuggetaboutthem. Typical expectation of the entitlement crew. Healthcare is a business, and a market commodity, and needs to be treated as such.

4. Pensions/Unions?- I hear crickets chirping.

[mhr]

4. The Missing 9.4 million Jobs

This is all about excuses for Bush's miserable economy, see below.

http://www.comstockfunds.com/index.cfm?act=Newsletter.c... ...

Comstock Funds
Charlie Minter
7 April 2004

Although the 308,000 increase in March payroll employment may seem like a lot compared to what we’ve been getting and what most have been expecting, it actually falls far short of what we should be seeing at this stage of a recovery. Here’s what we found in examining the last seven economic recoveries.

In the first six of these recoveries beginning with May 1954 employment rose by an average of 7.7 percent over the first 28 months with a high of 9.1 percent and a low of 5.5 percent. This includes one cycle that peaked in 24 months with a gain of 7.4 percent. Even in the recovery that started in March 1991, employment climbed 2.2% over the first 28 months. For all of the seven recoveries, employment rose by an average of 6.9 percent over 28 months. So let’s not hear any more about employment being a lagging indicator. It is not, and even if it were, 28 months is surely enough time to catch up.

In the current recovery employment has actually declined 0.2 percent in the first 28 months that includes the March number and the revisions that were released on Friday. If employment had increased by 6.9 percent, the average of the past recoveries, March payrolls would have come to about 139.9 million rather than the 130.5 million actually reported. This means that there are now 9.4 million fewer jobs than there should be at this point in the cycle, and that we needed an average increase of 322,000 jobs for each of the past 28 months to equal the average job growth of the last seven expansions.

Snip ......

[papau]

6. Good Point

[PROGRESSIVE1]

7. The "Hitlertage Foundazion" believes that....

NO BILLIONAIRE SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND!!!

[amazona]

8. self-employment is a ghetto

I've been self-employed for 20 years, and pretty much the only reason to be self-employed today is because either you are delusional about what it really means (that you can't get health insurance at a price you can pay between ages 45 and 65, when you can qualify for Medicare) or you do know what it means but have no choice since no one will hire you. Most people I know who are self-employed have an income of less than $10,000 a year -- greatly skewed by the odd individual who inherited his family business and so has an income of over one million a year. Even minimum wage earners make as much or more than most self-employeds. Really! In any given year, talk to your self-employed friends -- some number of them greater than zero have actually LOST money on their self-employment.

Self-employment is properly not counted. We get out here and sell pencils on the street because we can do nothing else, not because self-employment is anything but a dead end for most people. Big clue people, this is why so many women and minorities are getting pushed into self-employment. If it was a great thing with all kinds of money and benefits, the usual pale males would be pushing us aside.

The teen who babysits your kid off the books is self-employed. The man and his son who come with a truck to cut your lawn -- self-employed. Me, with my huge income in the high four figures, I'm self-employed. THis is not a social good. This is growing numbers of people who will need social services because we can't get health insurance at any price that we can pay.

Self-employment is not a dream. A secure job is the dream -- an impossible dream for many. So they end up selling crap in a flea market or on Ebay and joining the army of self-employed. Don't fall into this black hole if you can possibly avoid it.

If I had realized when I was younger that health care costs were going to make it impossible for me, as a self-employed, to have security no matter how hard I worked, I would have found a way to get a job. There were still some jobs then, even in the Reagan era. But the situation just keeps getting worse.

OK, end of rant. Sorry about that. Whew.

[shrike]

13. I agree with most of what you say, but I am one of the lucky ones

Before Bush got in office I was making more on my own than I ever did with a real job. Over the past three years I have matched my old salary -- but I worked in a low-paying field. It made more sense for me for me to freelance than work for someone else. Plus, I have the freedom to arrange my own schedule, no boss, my time is my own, and self-employment has been a form of job security. (I've been self-employed nine years.) I got tired of corporate shake-ups, vile bosses, corporate bankruptcies (I lived and worked through one of those) and higher-ups who would remind me, regularly, how lucky I was to have a job.

That said, I occupy a special niche and for most people, especially single people, self-employment isn't practical. I get health insurance through my husband and enough money to weather the economic times via regular, longtime clients who treat me well. But I started during the Clinton administration, a time of plenty -- really, I had more work than I could shake a stick at. I couldn't imagine starting from scratch now.

[zbdent]

9. Would you like to supersize that manufacturing job?

I guess that you could also toss in "dietary consultant" when you ask if they want fries with that.

[zbdent]

10. Hmm, flipping burgers = manufacturing job; cashier at the counter =

dietary consultant? Makes sense, since you also push the salads and diet cokes.

(sorry to reply to my own post, but the thought came out and I wanted it to be noted easily).

11. "New economy" term

The article uses the term "new economy"

That term was used to describe the nasdaq-5000 bubble economy!

12. Logical re-wording trick -- reduced

"The illusion of lost jobs in recent years occurred because job turnover declined after 2000, first with the recession, then even more sharply after 9/11. As a result, 1 million jobs have been artificially "lost" in the payroll survey since 2001."

The article at this point substitutes the words "job turnover declined after 2000" for the simpler and more correct "jobs declined after 2000", and sticks the word "illusion" on the front of the sentence.

The correct reduced sentence is

>>>"Lost jobs in recent years occurred because jobs declined after 2000"

Which then is reduced to

>>>"Job losses occurred after 2000"

What a neat word trick, huh? A claim supported by non-premises which is thus logically FALSE, but really just says the truth--under Bush, less jobs were generated.