At 02:27 PM 3/6/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote:
>> I'm sorry Dan, but I suspect that you could not find a single PhD
>economist
>> who would agree with your assertion that the 1990's were, quote, "not
>> unusual in employment."
>
>And, if I do? Is that PhD economist then wrong.
He would be an outlier. Just like the PhD's at the Institute for Creation
Research.
> The PhD ecconomist on
>this list has indicated that his view of how much you and he agree and your
>view of how much you and he agree vary significantly. You may write him
>off, but I can't see why you should expect the rest of us to.
I don't know if you saw the same post that I did, but it seemed like he
didn't even dignify the discussion with a substantive comment.
Anyhow, I feel quite confident that he would say that employment trends
under Clinton were unusual...... unusually good, that it is, at minimum.
This is what I meant by the referring to job losses in the 2001 recession
being milder than previous. I'll explain the NAIRU in a subsequent post,
but suffice to say that in the 2001 recession unemployment didn't fall very
far below the natural level of unemployment, if at all, whereas in past
recessions unemployment sometimes approached doube digits. This left a
much greater scope for job gains in the recovery.
>> For example, in 1996 when Bill Clinton was re-elected on the strength of
>> the economy, 63% of Americans had jobs. Today, the figure is 62.2%.
>> In 1982, around 57.9% of Americans had jobs, by 1989, when Reagan left
>> office, over 62% of Americans had jobs. By contrast, Bill Clinton took
>> until 1996 to match the peak employment of 1989-1990,
>
>Not true. The peak employment of 1989-1990 was 109.8 million in June 1990.
>The bottom of the jobs recession was May 1991 at 108.2 million. Employment
>was 110 million in February, 1993...roughly 1 year after Clintion took
>office.
This was due to population growth. What I am referring to is employment
rates for the population, which negates the effects of population gains,
and thus paint a true picture of what percentage of adults in the economy
are able to hold down jobs. My above statistics refer to employment rates.
>(and Clinton didn't
>> have the after-effects of a bubble to deal with) and by the end of
>> Clinton's eight-year term he had only increased the employment rate by
>> something on the order of 2.5 percentage points, compared to Reagan's
>> increase of over 4 percentage points.
>
>I thought you just said that the '90s were unusually high in job creation.
>If the above statement is true, then how can that also be true?
Reagan was starting from a much lower base. There were many more people
looking for work after the sever recession of the early 1980's, than after
the fairly mild 1991 recession. Thus, there was a need for much more job
creation.
Clinton's job creation was unusual because despite starting at a very high
base, employment continued to increase steadily - even as the unemployment
rate was up against its natural limits.
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
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