Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader answers the call of the Minister of Agriculture. Your Maximum Leader provides what he believes are the numbers for which he is looking. Below are the gross (estimated) number of civilian, non-farm jobs in the United States in the last quarter of the year listed.

122,575,000 - 1997
126,141,000 - 1998
128,936,000 - 1999
131,619,000 - 2000
132,358,000 - 2001
130,844,000 - 2002
129,902,000 - 2003
131,125,000 - 2004 (Through the last completed quarter of 2004.)

From that number we can see that there are 1,233,000 fewer jobs in the United States in 3rd quarter of 2004 than in last quarter of 2001. But, figuring that George W. Bush became president in January 2001 and not December 2001 the economy seems to have lost only 494,000 jobs.

Alas, your Maximum Leader couldn’t get easy to access charts and graphs for pre-1997 years.

But, as we all know, employment and economic figures all depend on more than just one set of numbers. Although he doesn’t know if he has found all the charts there are to find, the size of the employed civilian, non-farm labor force appears to be rather constant over the 2000 - 2004 period. But both the numbers of unemployed and non-workers (retired, children, etc) appear to be growing rapidly.

There are all sorts of reports to read about this, but it seems as though immigration and other population growth are the primary cause of more workers being added to the total workforce - thereby causing unemployment numbers to rise. And supporting a claim that we have lost jobs. (Sorry - no numbers to cite because the figures are embedded in tables and your Maximum Leader is having difficulty pulling out the ones needed.)

And these figures do not include farm workers, active-duty military, or government employees. The very few reports that your Maximum Leader have read all appear to show that employment in these areas has increased steadily from the last quarter of 2000 to the end of the 3rd quarter of 2004.

And while this little escapade may be interesting, it does not have any direct bearing on Dr. Rusty’s statistics. Which, indeed, do show exactly what he is claiming they do.

Carry on.