In other words, the US economy still has 1.2 million fewer jobs than at the start of the recession in March 2001. If employment growth had keep pace with population growth during the recovery there would have been 4.0 million more jobs in July. If timed from the start the recession, this would have been 6.9 million more jobs in July.
Ignoring inflation, the recovery has seen the slowest growth in weekly earnings of non-production supervisory workers. Factoring in inflation, weekly earnings growth for the entire recovery is negative -- a new record low. This is a good indicator of actual income of the majority of the American workforce. Over all, this recovery has the slowest growth in total salary and wage payments ever.
Some things are rising, of course. US workers are seeing the costs of housing (renting or owning a home) go up by 7.5 percent since the start of the recovery, health care costs by 11.8 percent, and energy costs by 34.1 percent. Unsurprisingly, households have incurred record debt levels and have seen their share of disposable income used to repay that debt in each quarter is at 13 percent for the thirteen quarters ending in March 2004. This is the first time since the early 1980s that this amount has been this high.
Unsurprisingly, the Bush Junta's rhetoric has ignored this reality. Rather than match their "pro-jobs" words in action, they have focused on reforming overtime regulations than boosting job creation or aiding those struggling to make ends meet. This reform will see an estimated six million workers loosing overtime protections. Bush wants to weaken them even more while seeking to make his elite-skewed tax cuts permanent. If this welfare for the wealthy goes through it will, as shown in the past few years, simply deepen the deficit without adding significant stimulus to the economy and the labour market.
And 59 million people (allegedly) voted for him, incredible.