In Trying Time, Scaling Down Expectations of Job Growth (NYT)

[struggle4progress]

By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: September 6, 2004

There was a time when adding just under 150,000 jobs a month, three years into an economic recovery, would have been considered a disaster. As recently as last December, President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers forecast that in 2004 employment would grow, on average, by about 216,000 jobs a month.

Yet on Friday, when the Labor Department reported employment growth of 144,000 jobs in August and bumped up its earlier estimates for June and July, yielding a three-month average of 104,000 new jobs a month, many economists said it was good news. <snip>

The 313,000 jobs created in the last three months are hardly enough even to keep up with population growth, which on its own adds about 150,000 people to the labor supply each month. Though wage growth picked up in July, salaries are still treading water. Average hourly wages of production workers and nonmanagerial service employees are 2.5 percent above what they were a year ago, not quite enough to keep up with inflation. <snip>

Against this backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that consumers are not feeling great. Last month, the Conference Board's index of consumer confidence - which aims to measure the outlook on jobs and overall economic conditions - fell for the first time since April. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, sales at stores of the nation's big retailers recorded the slowest growth since June 2003. <snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/business/06jobs.html?th