THOMAS OLIPHANT
Spin can't hide the economic slide
NEW YORK
For the elites, numbers are what economists call coincident indicators -- stuff that informs on current developments. For ordinary Americans, numbers are lagging indicators, the factual detail about an already experienced trend; like Bob Dylan, they understand you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind's blowing. They are already living the reality. For politicians that means that spinning is not only mostly silly, it can be dangerous because the reality check doesn't just come from the commentariat; it comes from reality itself. Last month's jobs data, so manicly anticipated and pre-hyped, is the perfect case in point. In their first issues tussle of the postconvention, predebates period, President Bush opted for hype, John Kerry for non-Chicken Little sobriety. The Bush-Cheney spinners have at least given up their post-Democratic convention slogan that the economy has turned the corner and there's no turning back. However, the claim that 144,000 new jobs in August is proof of anything amounts to leading with your chin. Americans already know about what Alan Greenspan famously called this summer's "soft patch." On average the economy was generating 295,000 new jobs a month during the three months beginning in March. For the three months beginning in June, the average has fallen by far more than half to just over 100,000. At 144,000 new jobs last month, the economy is not quite generating enough opportunity to accommodate new labor force entrants; indeed, the only way unemployment can technically inch "down" in such an environment is when there are fewer such entrants, not a healthy sign. Where politicians can make a contribution, as John Kerry did over the weekend, is by pointing out the difference between what a president says his policies will produce and what is actually produced. When the most recent of the gigantic Bush tax cuts was approved last summer, his administration pledged that the result would be 5.5 million new jobs by the end of this year; Bush is already short some 2.6 million of those. Historical comparison is also useful. Since the government began collecting monthly employment data in the late 1930s, every single recovery from every single downturn since has made up all of its job losses by the 31st recovery month. Indeed, the average length of the full job recovery period has been just 20 months if you leave out one, interesting period. I say interesting because this period, 1991-92, not only followed another very brief and shallow recession, it was of course the period that preceded his dad's defeat. In other words, the truly anemic job market the United States is enduring right now is without post-Depression precedent. Continued... |
