When Clinton was president, they used to say it took 150,000 jobs a month just to stay even with the growing labor force. For some reason, that number has shrunk to 130,000. During the Clinton administration 22.2 million jobs were created.
The jobs report, released on July 6, 2007, indicates the number of jobs for June, was 132,000 — a so-so number, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.5%.
The Whitehouse claims that since August 2003 more than 8.2 million jobs have been created which is not much more than 1/3 the number of jobs created under the Clinton administration.
It’s hard to think of a more direct correlation than number of jobs created and the unemployment rate. How is it possible to have 2/3 fewer jobs created and have the same unemployment rate?
If you factor in the number of people seeking jobs who are ready, willing and able to work and call them ‘marginally attached’ and classify them as ‘not in the labor force’ you can fudge the numbers by saying that people have dropped out of the work force and therefore the unemployment rate has not gone up because these people are not looking for work. The June 2007 jobs report indicates 1.5 million persons were ‘marginally attached’ to the labor force.
But this feeble attempt does not explain how these people manage to live year after year.
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