Even the NY Times can no longer pretend the economy is tanking:
After a recession, a long period of sluggishness and growing concern about swelling budget and trade deficits, the economy is now getting back into high gear, a little more than a year before Election Day. Just last week, consumer confidence ticked up, new claims for unemployment insurance edged down, housing construction surged and industrial production increased. Stock prices hovered near 16-month highs. Analysts increased their estimates of economic growth over the summer and for the last three months of the year.
Although that doesn’t mean that the NY Times has given up yet, as the title of the story indicates (“A Bright Economy? Only the Voters Know for Sure”):
Statistics are one thing; voter perception is another. That perception is shaped more than anything by jobs, or the lack thereof. Defying traditional patterns, this recovery has yet to generate sustained improvement in employment, after two and a half years of steady losses
Andrew | BYTE BACK
What’ wrong with focusing on jobs? Isn’t that where your average American, notices. In this respect, you make a ridiculous argument.
We’re not small enough to think the economy doing better is a bad thing. Jesus you’re a liitle too focused on partisan politics and not the real world.
John Cole
Isn’t that where your average American, notices. In this respect, you make a ridiculous argument.
Your average American worker isn’t unemployed, so I am not sure what the hell you are talking about.
The Commissar
There’s a somewhat frightening “perception is reality” power of the media. If I read every that the economy sucks, I will tend to think the economy sucks. If I read every day that Iraq is a quagmire, that’s what I’ll believe.
Glen
John,
Much as I hate to say it: you’re a fool on this one. When 2.8 million “average” Americans lose their jobs in less than three years, all feel threatened. If you don’t, you’re obviously sitting prettier than I. (Or smoking something better than Camels.)
Yep, the Dow, S&P, and other indicators are up for the moment. But unless or until most Americans make most of their incomes from clipping coupons or cashing dividend checks — now tax-free, praise jeebus! — it don’t mean a thing ’cause it ain’t got that swing….
Ralph Gizzip
The job market ALWAYS lags the economy. It always has and it always will. So when you see the economy start to rebound like it has you know the job market will rebound, too.
If you want to blame a politician for all of this, blame Clinton. It was his Justice Dept. going after Microsoft that kicked the first domino.
Dean
To follow up on Ralph’s point:
The question, from an objective viewpoint, is how long it takes for the lagging indicators to “catch up.” That is, if unemployment is a lagging indicator, and the economy enters an upswing, say, in November 2003, when will unemployment numbers drop, steadily?
If you have a “jobless recovery,” then the answer is: It won’t. But it’ll probably be a fairly anemic recovery, although it’s unlikely that unemployment would RISE in a “jobless recovery.”
Under most other circumstances, however, you’re probably looking at anywhere from 3-9 months. In any case, probably less than a year (especially w/ “just in time” production lines and reduced inventories). Which bodes ill for the Dems who are planning on running on an “economy worst since Herbert Hoover” line.
Andrew Lazarus
Well, absolutely NO ONE expects the recovery to create 2.5MM jobs, so the Hoover tag line is safe.
The question is indeed what people’s perceptions of the likelihood they get the axe is. John’s made a careless error, because the number to look at isn’t the (say) 5.8% unemployed on Election Day [and that’s a pretty reasonable estimate]; you have to add to that people who have been unemployed under Bush but found work. Those people are looking over their shoulders. You have to include people who haven’t been laid off but who work in industries where their colleagues and competitors are being laid off, or whose spouses, children, and parents have been laid off with consequent family disruption. You have to include people who are working but at large pay cuts. You have to include people who lost important benefits like health insurance. And you have to include people so discouraged they no longer look for work, although most of them are probably also too depressed to vote at this point.
Even if three million jobs appeared out of the sky tomorrow, this wouldn’t be enough to assuage the worries of the “average” American worker. I’d bet that at least 25% of American households have been affected by job loss under the Bush Administration, including many (formerly) in socioeconomic classes where this was a big shock.
Dean
Which, I take it, is how come Ronald Reagan was defeated in 1984?
I mean, that was a MUCH higher unemployment rate, overall, than it is currently, from a period (1970-1980) when the economy wasn’t performing all that hot to begin with. Industrial restructuring (bye-bye Rust Belt), airline deregulation (under Carter), energy costs still high, etc., etc.
By your estimation, close to 100% of the American work force should’ve been looking over their shoulder. This, then, is why Walter Mondale was sworn in, back in ’84??
RW
I was one of those who was unemployed during the last three years (9/11 took the best job I’ll ever have).
It never dawned on me to plame the President.
John Cole
Exactly my point Andrew- unemp0loyment is relatively low, yet the Democrats and their willing allies at the NY Times, will do everything they can to distort the actual health of the economy. Irrational fear is the weapon they need to win in 2004.
I am not sure how I made a careless error.
Thomas
From a long-term non-partisan vantage point, I’m not sure anybody will claim that the economy is healthy. The bottom line is that the average worker has worked harder for less money almost every year since the early 70s. This is a statistical fact. Everything ever written that has any durability about the middle class repeats this ad infinitum. Nobody will mention it in political circles because there are no easy televisual solutions and because, contrary to popular belief, the democrats do not hate the rich and are therefore reluctant to make them scapegoats (as they would be the obvious but wrong choice, I think).
This is one reason why everytime the economy goes bad it becomes more sinister than a cyclical turn. There is a reality beyond the NYTimes. It does occasionally slip into their pages.
Andrew Lazarus
The careless error was here; since if taken literally the average American worker isn’t unemployed until the rate hits 50.1%. We’d be in deep trouble long before that. I think the average American worker is probably as likely to know someone unemployed now as ever, even in higher unemployment periods, because the spectre of long-term job loss is reaching into professions where it was not known before.
Yes, and why Jimmy Carter and especially GHW Bush won easy re-election.
Max B. Sawicky
“Well, absolutely NO ONE expects the recovery to create 2.5MM jobs, so the Hoover tag line is safe.”
Au contraire, the Bush Administration claimed its tax cuts would add over four million jobs. (see the details here.)
All this talk about leading indicators, consumer confidence, industrial production, etc. is a dodge. What matters for most people is employment and wages. The labor market stinks on ice. Unemployment over six percent is not low; it’s high. We know it can be four percent, as in the latter half of the 90s. As someone pointed out, the existence of a recovery is not in question. The magnitude and distribution of its benefits are. Doubtless the economy will improve; it may be improving as we speak. That’s a low standard. The damage to family finances has already been done. Nothing that can plausibly happen erases that fact.
Andrew Lazarus
Sorry, Max: the Bush Administration SAYS that 4MM jobs would be created by the tax cuts (maybe we just need ANOTHER cut), but that doesn’t mean they BELIEVE it.
Consumer confidence lags even employment, and may be at its trough in Nov 04.
David Perron
Hmm…all of a sudden the Left are looking awfully credulous. Hey, are you guys in the market for a bridge? I promise I can have it delivered for you any old time.
Andrew Lazarus
Sure David, trade you for Saddam’s WMD.
Imam Psycho Muhammed
Lazarus’ Law – The first person who brings up Saddam’s WMD completely off topic loses.
David Perron
No, I’m looking for cash. Folks as truly credulous as you guys appear to be should be eager to pony up cash in bundles of small, nonsequential bills. It’s a BRIDGE! For CHEAP!
Robin Roberts
Thomas writes: ” The bottom line is that the average worker has worked harder for less money almost every year since the early 70s. This is a statistical fact.”
Hardly. Quite debateable in fact. Your claim depends upon measures of inflation and buying power that are losing credibility.
Charlie
Yes, but if the economy is on the up, you can bet even if it doesn’t lower the unemployment rate, it will stop it from getting higher. And if that happens, the Average “employed” worker will feel that his job IS safe. Therefore, the average american will toss all the unemployment statistics aside.