Some good news on the economy front....

[Rob67]

One thing to remember is that the state of the economy is a bipartisan issue and we should all be happy at the signs over the past months that have shown a lot of recovery from the recession helped by 9/11. It doesn't all get better overnight, folks! Let's hope things keep getting better. Even some of the airlines are starting to straighten up again....

Here's a decent piece from the Post-Gazette:
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308,000 jobs created in March
Unexpectedly large increase, biggest in 4 years, a boon to Bush
Saturday, April 03, 2004

By Steve Massey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jobs, the 2-year-old recovery's missing ingredient, finally appeared yesterday with the government reporting the nation's businesses added a whopping 308,000 workers in March, the biggest jump in four years and nearly triple what economists had been expecting.

The gains cut across a swath of industries save manufacturing, which didn't grow but, for the first time in four years, didn't shrink either, the Labor Department said.

Adding to the March surprise was a sizable upward revision in payroll employment gains for January and February, bringing the total number of non-farm jobs added in the year's first three months to 513,000, or an average 171,000 a month. Employment has now expanded seven straight months.

"We can finally kiss this talk of a jobless recovery goodbye," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist of Downtown-based PNC Financial Services Group.

The news was welcomed by the re-election campaign of President Bush, who has faced criticism that his persistently upbeat talk about the economy rang hollow in the face of tepid job growth.

Speaking in the battleground state of West Virginia, which narrowly went his way four years ago and where polls show him in a tight race, Bush basked in the Labor Department report.

He told a friendly audience at Marshall University in Huntington that the jump in hiring served as evidence that his "policies are working. ... This economy is strong. It is getting stronger."

Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry, in a statement released by his campaign, also called the March job figures "welcome news for America's workers. I hope it continues."

But, he added, "for too many families, living through the worst job recovery since the Great Depression has been, and continues to be, far too painful."

The jobs issue has been crucial in this year's presidential campaign.

Bush is on course to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his first term with employment below what it was when he came in. Republicans fear a replay of what happened to his father, who lost his re-election bid in 1992 largely on an economy that appeared to barely be creating jobs.

That view ultimately was proved wrong, but too late for the elder Bush, noted Mellon Financial Corp. Chief Economist Richard Hoey. Subsequent revisions after the 1992 election showed job gains that year to be far more robust than first reported. Hoey believes that will happen again in 2005, when government statisticians revise this year's tally.

The problem, Hooey and others have noted, is that early in economic recoveries, the Labor Department tends to miss the creation of new businesses and the hiring they undertake. Only after reviewing payroll tax data and other evidence is it able to do a more accurate count, and almost every time, the revised job figures are higher.

Despite March's surge in payroll jobs, the jobless rate rose a notch, to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent in February, and the number of people working part-time who would prefer to work full-time but couldn't find such jobs rose to 4.7 million, the same level as in January, the Labor Department said.

The labor force -- defined as people working or seeking work, and based on survey of households, not businesses -- also remained unchanged. A stagnant labor force is viewed as a sign of sluggishness. It tends to swell when people are encouraged enough to start seeking work again, something that has yet to happen.

Still, yesterday's monthly report provided what economists said was a vital piece to ensuring that an economic expansion that's into its third year will continue.

Tax cuts and record low interest rates that have spurred record home refinancings have put money in consumers's pockets, which they have spent freely throughout the economic slump, help making the 2001 recession one of the mildest on record.

In the past year, businesses also have stepped up investment, both on equipment and in restocking pared inventories, causing factory orders to rise and manufacturing activity to rise. The nation's economy grew at 6.1 percent in last year's second half, the fastest pace since 1984.

But economists have feared that without adequate job and thus income growth, consumer spending will run out of steam, causing the expansion to falter. Yesterday's report put those fears to bed for many.

"The way I like to put it is, the kindling for stronger growth was the tax cuts, and the interest rates cuts and the refinancings and the lower oil prices of a year ago," PNC's Hoffman said. "All that kindled the economy's fire. Now the jobs are the logs that will keep the fire going."