Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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The Washington Post article on the August job report, which showed the economy adding 142,000 jobs in August, told readers:
“Economists, however, were quick to caution that the weak jobs number is an outlier at a time of several other stronger measures of economic activity, including auto sales — which soared in August — and exports. Markets were little-changed on the news and ended the day in positive territory.
‘I don’t believe the numbers,’ said Tim Hopper, chief economist at TIAA-CREF. ‘Not only are they very weak, they just don’t match anything else that’s in the market right now.’”
Actually, the numbers match the market very well. The economy grew at a 1.1 percent annual rate in the first half of the year. Faster growth in the second half of the year might bring the rate for the whole year to 2.0 percent. If we assume that productivity growth is 1.5 percent, this would imply an increase in the demand for labor of 0.5 percent. That translates into 700,000 jobs for the year or roughly 60,000 a month.
Even if we assume productivity growth of just 1.0 percent (this is well below the rate we saw even in the slowdown years from 1973-1995), the implied rate of job creation would just be 1.4 million a year, or 120,000 a month.
The article gives no explanation of why any economist would expect a much faster rate of job growth when the economy is growing so slowly.