Editor: The economic report of 308,000 new jobs released last week is impressive, as it is the largest reported jump in the last four years. This report is excellent news politically for the Bush campaign, and more importantly would be so for all Americans.
However, a closer look reveals that according to the Department of Labor, 230,000 of these new jobs were added to service industries such as education and health care, but include the over 70,000 Southern California grocery workers that recently ended their strike.
Goods-producing industries added 78,000 jobs, including 71,000 construction jobs. Most of these are construction workers that routinely collect unemployment during the off-season.
Manufacturing jobs did not grow at all, but held steady. This is relatively good news, as the manufacturing sector had been losing jobs for the past 43 consecutive months.
So at best, 167,000 or so of these jobs are really new. With most of these in the service industry, one could assume that many are related to travel and tourism, which would naturally increase with the warm weather.
The average workweek decreased to 33.7 hours while the manufacturing workweek also lowered to 40.9 hours. Economists watch the length of the workweek as a leading indicator of employment.
Another leading indicator, temporary help payrolls, fell by about 2,000 jobs. Employers often hire temps before making more permanent hires, but some economists have worried that firms have been using temps to avoid hiring full-time workers.
Gateway has just announced job cuts of 40 percent of their workforce, or 2,500 that will be joining the ranks of the unemployed – which last month increased from 5.6 percent to 5.7 percent – and the new trillion dollar corporation, Bank of America/Fleet Boston will cut 12,500 more jobs. So we’re already starting the month of April at least 15,000 jobs in the red.
Daniel Wells
Tracy