At 04:11 PM 3/2/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote:
>> Clearly, the 90's were unusual.
>
>In some ways, but not in employment. The job growth from '92 to '00 was
>21%. The average job growth over 8 years, since the '40-'48 comparison,
>was 18%: higher than average, but not unusual. The sixties saw far higher
>growth than this, peaking out over '61 to '69, with a 30% job growth. Even
>'72 to '80 saw better job growth than '92 to '00, at 23%.
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."
This is what I mean about playing "fast and loose with the numbers."
You toss a lot of numbers out here, and reach a conclusion that is the
economic equivalent of "the world is only 15,000 years old" . There is
simply no serious economist who agrees with you on this Dan.
I may be off slightly off on the top of my head here, but IIRC the
unemployment rate hit 3.8% during the 1990's. If this does not qualify
as "unusual employment" in your mind, then I don't know what does.
>2002 and 2003 were the first consecutive years with a net loss of jobs in
>each year since the end of WWII. 2003 compared to 2000 shows a net job
>loss of 1.4%. The next worse performance was -0.3% from '79-'82.
Is it just me, or do "'79-'82" qualify as "consecutive years?"
Anyhow, I think that our economic situation is unusual, since the US
economy is recovering from its largest asset-bubble since, well the end of
WWII. (Actually, its probably the largest asset bubble since the 1920's.)
In terms of analyzing job gains, it is important to consider that from
1960-1990, female labor force participation was increasing significantly.
I am sure that that had to play a role in the time series of employment
gains, and I would suspect that female labor force participation was
probably beginning to level-out by 2000 (although it may have been
increasing a bit in the late 1990's due to the 1996 welfare reform.)
Anyhow, the point is that the current economic times are highly unusual.
In particular:
1) The US is recovering from the largest asset price bubble since the 1920's
2) During the 2001 recession, very few jobs were lost relative to previous
recessions
3) Historically speaking, US employment levels, while they could be better,
aren't exactly "bad" either.
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, (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.
Here is an article with the data, and an interesting discussion of this topic:
http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2446951
JDG
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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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