News from the economic front

Bush's War on the Economy is a stunning success, as the Labor Department declared the nation's hiring slump the worst in 20 years. Since Bush took office, over 2 million have lost their jobs. The number of help-wanted advertisements in newspapers fell to a 40-year low (though that probably has as much to do with Monster.com and HotJobs than with the economy).

Another stunning success -- only the wealthiest are still making money:

The shortage of jobs has also slowed wage growth so that only workers in the most affluent groups are still gaining ground on inflation, ending a six-year streak of broad increases in buying power.

You can almost hear the high-fives in the White House today.

All told, there were 132,333 announced layoffs in January, up from 92,917 in December. Incidentally, the three most affected states? Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. Woohoo! Blue states, all three of them!

And February's news from the front lines are already looking good, as WorldCom accounced 5,000 layoffs (just months after laying off 17,000), Bank of America 1,000, Terra Lycos 150, AMC Entertainment 145, and so on.

If Bush's war against Saddam goes as well as his war against the economy, things may not go as bad in Iraq as many of us fear.

Posted February 06, 2003 12:14 PM | Comments (72)