The U.S. economy grew at a stunning 7.2 percent in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported. That's a pace not seen in 19 years and more than double 3.3 percent growth rate in the second quarter.
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U.S. businesses created a modest 57,000 jobs in September, but still lost 41,000 overall for the third quarter.
The hiring picture remains mixed. IBM has announced plans to hire 10,000 workers, but drug maker Merck & Co. plans to lay off 4,400, while Sony Corp. intends to hand out 20,000 pink slips.
The 80 Houston firms surveyed recently by the National Association of Purchasing Management -- Houston have shed jobs for 24 consecutive months and are likely to do so again this month, noted Doug Miller, chairman of the group's business survey.
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Wall Street shrugged off the report as old news. The Dow Jones industrial average rose a mere 12.08 points, even though the 7.2 GDP growth was far stronger than many economists had predicted.
In contrast to the current job market, the nation added 1.2 million jobs in the first quarter of 1984, when the economy was cooking at a 9 percent rate. "This is not your father's 7.2 percent," noted Bryan Jordan, an economist with Banc One Investment Advisors in Columbus, Ohio.
Jordan estimates 55,000 more jobs or so have been created in October. But the economy needs to create 150,000 to 200,000 jobs a month "before we can sound the all-clear," he said.
Jim Glassman, senior U.S. economist for JP Morgan Chase, argues that if the nation can't create jobs when production is growing at such a clip "we're in a miracle economy."
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But with job growth barely materializing, Democrats continue to cast President Bush as a latter-day Herbert Hoover.
In contrast to real growth of the kind the nation saw under Clinton, jobless growth helps only one class of people — the CEO class of owner/investors who pull the Bush/Cheney strings. Their net worth will rise without the troublesome bother of lower-class laborers to upset their view of pure, accelerating, untaxed profits.
Jobless growth is useless growth. The Bush economy is class warfare based on class hostility, characterized by the hatred of the privileged for the little people who mow their golf courses. Their logic runs something like this: "So what if they all lose their jobs — they can always work at Wal-Mart or enlist in the armed forces."
