The Magic Job Machine

Wand? Check. Fairy dust? Check. Smoke and mirrors? Check.

Today, the White House predicted the creation of 2.6 million jobs in 2004. It is worth noting that last year’s White House prediction of creating 1.7 million jobs was not reached; job creation in 2003 fell short by almost 1.8 million.

It sounds like a lot of jobs: 2,600,000 jobs created in one year. Now, divide that by 12 months in a year. Feel free to use a calculator, but my figure is 216,666.67 jobs per month. In the interest of simplification, lets say between 216,000 and 217,000. This number is already optimistic. Remember when we found out there were only 1000 jobs created in December of 2003? That number was revised upwards to 16,000 (320 jobs per state). Just Friday we learned that although the economists figured there were 160,000 jobs created in January (still far short of 216,000), in reality only 112,000 jobs had been created (51% of 216,000). Oh, and please note that this ambitious level of projected job creation in 2004 still falls short of what was achieved in the Clinton Administration. People are starting to wonder how this jobless recovery thing works.

But wait, it gets worse. Remember, economists pretty much agree that just to keep the unemployment rate from rising, the economy must add something like 150,000 jobs each month. This is a consensus number, an average; some economists think the number is closer to 100,000, others believe it’s more like 200,000. So not only does the January number fall short of helping the unemployment rate, the unmet projection would barely have helped. Indeed, the whole 2.6 million jobs this year might be needed just for new additions to the workforce. And that’s before we go giving work permits to non-citizens.

But remember that 1.7 million jobs that was supposed to have been created last year? That would have only worked out to 141,666.67 jobs per month. Even if that modest goal had been achieved, we would still be looking at rising unemployment.

Oh wait, you say. I have forgotten that the job creation numbers are skewed by the self-employed and independent contractors, that legion of people who have created jobs for themselves. Tell it to this guy:

Even those who still count themselves among the employed in America are struggling to make ends meet. Self-employed computer programmer Thomas Mooney — who bills himself as the “president/janitor” of his Minneapolis company, TeleProc — said he cannot last much longer with so little work in an industry that was once booming. “I’m barely employed — no income yet this year,” Mooney said. “I have $7,000 in future prospect business and that is all I know about for the rest of the year.”

Yeah, being your own boss is great. It’s even better when you have an income.