April 02, 2004, 2:32 p.m.
The Book of Jobs
Boom naysayers lose their last refuge.

You had a bad week if you’re a Bush basher. You even a bad week if you’re simply in denial about the Bush boom. You were already demoralized by Wednesday’s strong manufacturing-growth numbers and the recent rebound in the stock market, but then along came the fastest payroll job growth in four years. To make matters even worse, this job growth is showing up in the payroll survey, which has been the last refuge of Boom Pessimists. Do you know what happens when your last refuge is removed? Answer: you have no more refuge.

Every economic-growth indicator has been strongly positive since the president’s tax cut last May. The employment reports were either bullish or flat depending on which ones you looked at. Bush supporters focused on the Labor Department’s household survey while detractors focused on the payroll survey. In short, everything was good except the payroll survey. Well — now the payroll survey is booming, too.

For the month of March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported a massive increase of 308,000 new jobs in the payroll survey. This means that since Bush’s tax cut in May of 2003, there has been a net job increase of 675,000. It also means that in the past three months, there have been over half a million jobs created. By the way, BuzzCharts wants to emphasize that this is the payroll survey — you know, the bad one.

There’s good news according to the household survey, as well. It has reported a net increase in jobs of half a million since George W. was sworn in, and a net increase of 1.5 million since Bush’s tax cut in June 2001. It is also showing a net increase of almost 800,000 jobs since the tax cut last May.

The household survey is the one used to calculate the unemployment rate, which has been dropping steadily since last summer. The report for March shows that unemployment up-ticked slightly, moving from 5.6 percent to 5.7 percent. Why has this occurred? People are pouring back into the workforce. This contradicts the popularly held belief that workers have “given up” looking for work and have been pouring out of the workforce. In fact, 98.4 percent of the increase in unemployment is due to people entering or re-entering the workforce. Skeptics can check the math: The change in the labor force is currently 179,000. Divide that by the change in the number of unemployed, which is currently 182,000.

BuzzCharts has only one question left: How are the boom naysayers going to explain away these new numbers?

— Jerry Bowyer is a radio and television talk show host and the author of The Bush Boom.He can be reached through www.BowyerMedia.com.

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