November 5, 2004
THE BUSH BOOM:
October Job Growth Stronger Than Expected (Leigh Strope, November 5, 2004, AP)
Employers aggressively hired new workers in October, adding 337,000 people to their payrolls after a sluggish summer, but the unemployment rate rose fractionally to 5.5 percent.The pace of hiring was the fastest in six months, nearly double what economists had forecast, the Labor Department reported Friday, saying cleanup efforts from hurricanes that struck Florida and much of the Southeast helped jump-start the labor market.
But the overall, seasonally adjusted jobless rate actually rose by 0.1 percentage point from the 5.4 percent rate of September because more people renewed their job searches, expanding the pool of available workers.
Economists were elated by the surge in payrolls. "It's now looking like that soft spot is clearly over," David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's, said of the recent slowdown.
Numbers like that this Summer would have given Mr. Bush 50 states. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 5, 2004 10:08 AM
I don't suppose there is any chance that the gremlins in the Labor Department pushed some of these numbers off until after the election...nahhh.
Posted by: curt at November 5, 2004 11:54 AMThe worst thing about a Kerry presidency would have been his inheritance of a growing economy and therefore getting credit for it. Thank God that didn't happen.
Posted by: andy at November 5, 2004 12:06 PMNot Hawaii.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 5, 2004 3:27 PMIf the election were held next Tuesday instead of last the MSM would focus on the increase in the unemployment rate rather than on the job growth.
Posted by: George at November 5, 2004 3:46 PM