NYT: Job Figures Help President Promote Economic Record (?) [View All]

Job Figures Help President Promote Economic Record
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: September 4, 2004


....Mr. Bush began his burst of campaigning in Moosic, Pa., outside Scranton, an hour after the Labor Department had released figures showing that the economy generated 144,000 jobs last month.

That was a bit below what economists had projected but considerably more than in each of the previous few months, when employment growth had all but stalled. The unemployment rate declined, to 5.4 percent form 5.5 percent, in July.

"Our growing economy is spreading prosperity and opportunity, and nothing will hold us back," Mr. Bush said in Pennsylvania.

The employment figure was high enough to be a huge relief to the campaign, which had feared that another month of pronounced weakness in the job market would have left Mr. Bush very much on the defensive.

But it was not strong enough to deprive Mr. Kerry of the opportunity to point out that Mr. Bush still stands to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs in his term. Despite a yearlong string of monthly employment increases, some robust and some paltry, the economy has still lost nearly one million jobs since Mr. Bush took office....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/politics/campaign/04bush.html