300,000 New Jobs Created?

The good news, they tell us, is that the economy has created 300,000 new jobs in the last 3 months. The trouble is that the economy has to generate 400,000 new jobs a month just to stay even with layoffs and standard attrition of businesses going under, etc. The “good news,” in other words, is that the net loss of jobs has decreased from 400,000 per month to 300,000 per month. I suppose that’s good news…but calling it a recovery is a bit rich. A recovery, after all, needs to actually add jobs to the economy, not take them away…

This weekend is a big book deadline weekend, so I shan’t be blogging much.