Just to put the 175,000 new payroll jobs in perspective, that's just below the average of 179,500 new payroll jobs that were created each month from Carter through Clinton. Following are the number of payroll jobs created during each presidential term since Roosevelt's final term:
TOTAL NONFARM EMPLOYMENT (thousands)
Annual
No. of Monthly Annual Avg thru
Term Mo Year Count Change Months Average Average Clinton
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roosevelt Jan 1941 34480 7423 48 154.6 1856 1632
Truman 1 Jan 1945 41903 2772 48 57.8 693 1616
Truman 2 Jan 1949 44675 5470 48 114.0 1368 1687
Eisenhower Jan 1953 50145 2743 48 57.1 686 1713
Eisenhower Jan 1957 52888 795 48 16.6 199 1807
Kennedy Jan 1961 53683 5900 48 122.9 1475 1968
Johnson Jan 1965 59583 9855 48 205.3 2464 2022
Nixon Jan 1969 69438 6182 48 128.8 1546 1967
Nixon/Ford Jan 1973 75620 5072 48 105.7 1268 2027
Carter Jan 1977 80692 10339 48 215.4 2585 2154
Reagan 1 Jan 1981 91031 5322 48 110.9 1331 2068
Reagan 2 Jan 1985 96353 10780 48 224.6 2695 2252
G.H. Bush Jan 1989 107133 2592 48 54.0 648 2105
Clinton 1 Jan 1993 109725 11507 48 239.7 2877 2833
Clinton 2 Jan 1997 121232 11156 48 232.4 2789 2789
G.W. Bush Jan 2001 132388 -821 44 -18.7 -224
Sep 2004 131567
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total (Kennedy thru Clinton) 78705 480 164.0 1968
Total (Kennedy thru G.W. Bush) 77884 524 148.6 1784
Source: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce, Series CES0000000001
The above table is updated through September of 2004. If we did in fact add 175,000 new payroll jobs in October, Bush's average since January 2001 will rise from minus 18.7 thousand to minus 14.4 thousand jobs per month.
Of course, some will point to the household survey, according to which the American economy has added 1.6 million net new jobs since January 2001. Most experts suggest that the true jobs figure is likely somewhere between the figures from the payroll and household surveys. Still, even if one accepts the household survey figure, the 1.6 million new jobs in the 44 months since January 2001 comes out to 436 thousand jobs per year. As the above table shows, that is the lowest rate of job creation since Eisenhower's second term.
The household survey is also where the unemployment rate comes from. It is true that the current 5.4 percent rate is the lowest since a 5.0 percent rate in September of 2001. However, part of this drop is due to the relative shrinking of the labor force illustrated in the following graph:
CIVILIAN LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE (percent, seasonally adjusted)
The figures for this and a number of other employment statistics can be found at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/jobs.html. If the labor force participation rate was currently at its January 2001 level of 67.2 percent, the labor force would be 150.545 million instead of 147.483 million. If those additional 3.062 million people were counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 7.3 percent, not 5.4 percent. Of course, it's not clear exactly why the labor force participation rate has shrunk. Whatever the cause, however, this is part of the reason for the drop in the unemployment rate.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF WEEKS UNEMPLOYED (16 years and over, seasonally adjusted)
One other negative bit of employment data is the average number of weeks unemployed. It's currently at 19.6 weeks, down from a high of 20.3 weeks in February of this year. As the following graph shows, that is the highest level since 1950 except for the three month period from May to July of 1983.
In summary, if I were a Bush supporter, I would avoid dwelling on employment data this close to the election.