White House says, “What recession?”
Bush administration officials on Friday sought to ease fears the U.S. was tipping into recession after a government report showed the economy shed jobs for the first time in four years last month.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was not totally surprised about August’s job decline given housing troubles and less government hiring, but viewed the U.S. economy as still healthy and growing.
The moribund housing sector “is going to extract a penalty on growth, and what we’re going through in the credit markets is very apt to extract a penalty on growth, but the economy is going to continue to grow in the second half of the year,” Paulson told Bloomberg television.
The Labor Department on Friday said monthly payrolls fell by 4,000 jobs, sending shock waves through financial markets that were anticipating growth of 110,000 jobs.
Nonetheless, Paulson said the economy was fundamentally healthy, and that would provide a good backdrop for working through problems in the housing and credit markets, a process which would take time.
“There’s always a chance of recession. We don’t think it is likely,” White House economic adviser Ed Lazear told CNBC television.
One Response to “White House says, “What recession?””
By karen m on Sep 7, 2007 | Reply
What I find most interesting about this is -
“The unemployment rate stayed at 4.6 percent in August, despite the drop in payrolls, which was in line with economists’ forecasts.
The unemployment rate is calculated using a separate survey of households, rather than the employer survey used to count those on U.S. payrolls. The employer survey is generally considered more reliable by economists.
The household survey actually showed an even larger drop in the number of Americans saying they had jobs - a drop of 316,000. But the unemployment rate stayed unchanged because those counted as unemployed also decreased by 24,000, and there was a big jump in those counted as not being in the labor force, a number that rose by 592,000.
The July gain in payrolls was revised 24,000 lower, while the June increase was also cut by 57,000 from its previous reading, the second time the June gain has been trimmed since the original report. The 81,000 fewer jobs in the earlier months than previously reported was also a cause for concern among economists.” Quoted from CNN Money
Which makes one ponder so what is the REAL Unemployment/employment, EP (employment Payroll) statistics??
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/07/news/economy/jobs_august/index.htm?postversion=2007090711