George Walker Hoover?
President Bush is on track to match Herbert Hoover's record of job destruction.

Now that the war with Iraq is over, President Bush is focusing on passing his proposed tax cut—optimistically dubbed the "Jobs and Growth Plan," rather than the more accurate "Deficits and Deficits Plan."

The Treasury Department is putting out word that accelerating the planned reduction of marginal tax rates, cutting taxes on dividends, and otherwise tinkering with the tax code will create more than 1 million jobs by the end of 2004. The Council of Economic Advisers is more sanguine, estimating the Bush plan will create 1.4 million new jobs by the end of 2004.

But 1.4 million jobs in 18 months isn't many jobs, and it isn't much growth. By historical standards, when it comes to job creation, Bush is shaping up to be more like Herbert Hoover than Ronald Reagan. He stands to preside over the first presidency since Hoover's in which the American economy lost jobs.
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  thanks to Tapped

Unemployment jumps to 6%
Jobless rate surges to cyclical high as employers shed another 48,000 jobs from non-farm payrolls.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 6 percent in April, the government said Friday, as businesses cut thousands of jobs from their payrolls for the third straight month, extending the longest stretch of labor-market pain since World War II.
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  thanks to Brad DeLong's Website

So, what's the real unemployment number?

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the April unemployment figures. The rate, which had decreased from its high of 6.0% in December to 5.7% in January, due to a shell game "change in statistical calculations", crept up to 5.8 in March, and returned to 6.0% in April.

But a number of questions have been raised recently on exactly what does the "official" rate mean, and is it indicative of the actual employment picture in the US economy. Last weekend, the New York Times focused on the influence of long-term joblessness on the numbers, as these workers have been purged from the calculations in increasing numbers in the past few months. Yesterday, See the Forest asked what factors are included and does the BLS provide a number which includes such factors as discouraged workers, part-time due to economic factors, etc.

Well, the answer turns out to be yes and no. Or, I should say, the BLS provides that information, but only in "raw" numbers, i.e., not seasonally adjusted. It claims that somehow the information it needs to calculate the "real" unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, is "not available".

Funny, with a little digging, I was able to do it. By using archived reports, I was able to find those counted as unemployed, those not in the labor force but desiring employment, and those employed part time for economic reasons, e.g., no available full time jobs.
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