Contrary to reports, CEA predicted 3.6 million — not 2.6 million — jobs would be created in 2004 SOURCE: This analysis is a joint release by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Received from source 18 Feb 2004 6:27PM- The CEA’s prediction is being widely characterized as predicting that a total of 2.6 million jobs — or 217,000 jobs per month — will be created in 2004; that characterization is inaccurate. The CEA’s prediction assumed that an average of 300,000 jobs per month would be created from November 2003 through December 2004. (Just three months into that prediction, job creation has fallen 689,000 short of the CEA forecast.)
- Specifically, CEA predicted that the number of jobs in the economy would average 132.7 million in 2004, reflecting a 2.6 million increase from its average level in 2003. There are 130.2 million jobs right now; for the economy to average 132.7 million jobs in 2004, job growth would have to equal 460,000 per month.
- As a recent report we released documents, the Administration has consistently been predicting that robust job growth is around the corner, and has consistently been wrong.<3> In 2003, for example, the CEA predicted that the average number of jobs in 2003 would be 1.7 million higher than its average in 2002. Instead, it was 400,000 lower.
There has been substantial confusion concerning this issue, with many analysts and stories incorrectly suggesting that the CEA projects a total of 2.6 million jobs to be created this year. In effect, these reports are stating that the CEA has predicted there will be 132.7 million jobs at the end of 2004 when, in fact, the CEA has predicted that the average number of jobs for all of 2004 will be 132.7 million. To reach this average figure, there will have to be many more jobs than 132.7 million in December 2004, as there are 2.5 million fewer jobs than that right now.
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