Obama’s Endangered Economists

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Well, gang, it’s the first Friday of the month, and we all know what that means: the nonfarm payroll employment report! So close your eyes and cross your fingers and, well, don’t bother, we know it’s not going to be good. “The nation’s economy continued to sputter as private-sector employers added just 71,000 jobs in July,” write The Washington Post’s Michael A. Fletcher and William Branigin. “The small increase in private-sector employment was more than offset by the loss of 143,000 temporary census jobs, and the nation’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5 percent. Overall, the nation shed 131,00 jobs in July.”

The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson breaks the news down into five tidy points:

1. SORTA BAD: Private sector employment has increased by 630,000 this year.
2. REALLY BAD: … but it’s closer to 200,000, or 40K per month, if you factor out March and April.
3. LOPSIDED: Health care employment alone accounts for 231,000 new jobs in the last year.
4. DISCOURAGING: There were 1.2 million discouraged workers in July, up by 389,000 from a year earlier.
5. DEPRESSING: June was twice as bad as we thought, since the payroll changed was revised from -125,000 to -221,000.


O.K., we’ve flogged this horse before, and it’s relatively useless to use one month’s figures get into a big debate about which administration is to blame or whether the stimulus is helping or hurting and whether the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to lapse. Besides, today’s economic news was accompanied by something much more fun: personality, gossip and possible White House backstabbing.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/obamas-endangered-economists/?th&emc=th