Flashback: Bush's Economy Posts 7.2% Quarterly Growth, and CNN Wonders: But Where Are the Jobs?

Of course, of course. This post is, I guess, so obvious as to be pointless, but let's just note it for the sake of completeness.

While Treasury Secretary John Snow predicted this month the economy would soon be adding 200,000 jobs a month, other White House officials Thursday were quick to note the recent burst of growth has yet to create many jobs.

"We need to continue to act to build upon the steps we have taken to get our economy growing so we can continue to translate growth into job creation," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, according to a Reuters report.

The Labor Department, in a separate report Thursday, said new weekly claims for unemployment benefits were still relatively high in the week ending Oct. 25.

In fact, during a quarter with the strongest growth rate since 1984, total employment fell by 165,000 jobs, according to Labor Department statistics, in part because of strong productivity growth, which enables companies to get more work out of fewer workers.

Fell only by 165,000 jobs? We should be so lucky.

The 7.2% was the initial reading; it was later revised down to paltry 6.5% or something like that. And CNN, it should be noted, does say the economy "sizzled" in that quarter, but, um, that's hard to not say. 7.2% is an eye-popping number.

And, incidentally, that was no one-quarter wonder, either; the economy had already been growing by quite a bit for two years, and would continue growing until Bush's last quarter in office. It was adding a huge burst of growth on to an already nicely-growing economy.

But having acknowledged that, they then go on to whine endlessly about jobs, despite the fact that an economy that just grew 7.2% is obviously going to be producing jobs pretty quickly.

Thanks to Drew for the reminder.

posted by Ace at 12:57 PM

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