Ouch. These numbers are barely 10 percent of the 300,000 monthly new jobs Bush promised if he got his tax cuts.
Brutal.
U.S. employers added a paltry 32,000 workers to payrolls last month, the government said on Friday in a startlingly weak report that led Wall Street to forecast a slower pace of Federal Reserve interest-rate rises.
The Labor Department (news - web sites) also cut its tally of job growth in May and June by a combined 61,000, adding to the weak tenor of a report that came as unwelcome news for an election-bound President Bush.
Want some humor?
The department said the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent last month from 5.6 percent in June, but it warned the figure was drawn from a survey of households, which is a less reliable barometer of month-to-month changes in employment than its larger survey of businesses.
The Bush administration seized on the drop in the jobless rate as a bright spot.
Let them seize on whatever they can to try and make their case. Papa Bush was ousted by the voters because he seemed oblivious to the economic pain suffered by the country. History is repeating itself. Not only is the employment picture bleak, but many Americans are underemployed -- software developers now working as short-order cooks, etc. Also, mass layoffs have decimated workplaces, killing morale and forcing the lucky survivors to work that much harder to pick up the slack. And to add insult to injury, wages are stagnant.
So let Bush and his cronies continue bragging about the economy. Because the words coming out of their mouths doesn't match reality on the ground. And nothing is a sure-fire path to defeat in November than being obviously oblivious to the economic hardships suffered by the voters (and Wall Street too).
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