At 12:20 PM 3/6/2004 -0800 Doug Pensinger wrote:
>John wrote:
>
>> Here is an article with the data, and an interesting discussion of this
>> topic:
>> http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2446951
>
>So, is this a solicitation or were you going to lend us your password?
>
>8^)
Drats. Sorry, sometimes I have a hard time seeing if an article is free
or pay on that site.
My data is taken from an enclosed graph, which I will happily send to
anyone who asks for it.
And in a way, I guess this is a soliciation, as in my mind _The Economist_
is head and shoulders above any other news magazine out there.
Some key excerpts from the article:
Despite strong productivity growth and an accelerating recovery from the
recession of 2001 (the economy grew by an annual 4% in the fourth quarter
of last year), jobs are being created at a feeble rate of 100,000 or so a
month. The jeremiahs point out that a net total of 2.3m jobs have been lost
since Mr Bush came to office.
Although this date is often used as the starting-point from which to make a
comparison, it is a silly one. In early 2001 the hangover effects from the
investment boom of the late 1990s were only starting to be felt.
Unemployment, at 4.2%, was unsustainably below the �natural� unemployment
rate, consistent with stable inflation, that most economists put at around
5%. In other words, perhaps two-thirds of those 2.3m jobs were
unsustainable �bubble� ones. Given the scale of job losses�along with the
shocks of a stockmarket bust, corporate-governance scandals and terrorist
attacks�it is a wonder that the recession was so mild. By the same token, a
mild recession is now being followed by a commensurately mild recovery.
.....
Between 1980 and 2002, America's population grew by 23.9%. The number of
employed Americans, on the other hand, grew by 37.4%. Today, 138.6m
Americans are in work, a near-record, both in absolute terms and as a
proportion of the population (see chart).
Of course some firms wither�Reynolds Tobacco's workforce shrank by
nine-tenths between 1980 and 2002�but others grow: Wal-Mart's by 4,700%.
During the 1990s, about a quarter of all American businesses shed jobs in a
typical three-month period, equivalent to 8m jobs. Yet jobs created greatly
outnumbered these, to the tune of 24m over the decade.
The process leads to incremental shifts that can have profound cumulative
consequences for some sectors of the economy. In 1960 only one in 25
workers was employed in the business-services and health-care industries.
Today, one in six is. In terms of output, manufacturing has risen, but,
thanks to that productivity spurt, these goods are produced by fewer
people�12% of the workforce, less than half the proportion of three decades
ago.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
