NO FACTS PLEASE, WE'RE SKITTISH:

Bush Allies, Falling Down on the Jobs (Robert J. Samuelson, March 10, 2004, Washington Post)

Since peaking in March 2001, the number of payroll jobs has dropped 1.8 percent (that's 2.35 million jobs). Production, incomes and employment are all rising, even if job increases are tiny (61,000 a month since August). People are still spending stupendous sums; in 2003 they bought 7.2 million homes and 16.7 million cars and light trucks. The only intellectual justification for the overblown rhetoric is that if the situation were reversed the White House would be making equally bombastic claims for unexpectedly large employment gains.

Few economists predicted the poor job growth. Theories abound. It's said that companies have become more productive by mastering new technologies. Chief executives won't hire until they're convinced a strong recovery will continue. Efficient firms displace the inefficient (if Company A, with 10 workers, goes bankrupt and its customers shift to Company B, which hires five workers, there's still a net job loss).

Offshoring is the latest villain. Hordes of high-paying software and service jobs have supposedly left for India. The news coverage of this has been a bit on the sensational side. Time decided it merited a cover story, though estimating that offshoring caused no more than 10 percent of job loss. That's 235,000 jobs out of payroll employment exceeding 130 million. A New York Times "teaser" headline warned: "No job is safe, unless it's at the nursing station." (The story didn't justify the headline.) The truth is that no one knows how many service jobs have gone offshore. There are no reliable surveys. But the number -- so far -- seems small and is overshadowed by domestic job losses stemming from the bursting of the stock and tech bubbles. Since early 2001 the telecommunications industry alone has lost 275,000 jobs, about 20 percent of its total. Here's a simple question to measure offshoring: How many white-collar workers do you know whose jobs have moved to India? For most Americans, the answer is probably "none."

Politically, little of this matters.

How long can you maintain hysteria in the face of the facts though?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2004 11:19 PM