EDITORIAL
Economic turnaround fine — if you have a job

If you want to look for good economic news, it is not hard to find. The stock market is healthy and gradually inching its way back to near-record highs. Productivity is up.

But there is another sector of the economy that should give pause to anyone who thinks our economy is completely on track: Jobs.

The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (for February) reports that payrolls across the country grew by a meager 21,000.

And virtually all that growth was in government; in effect jobs where taxpayers hire themselves.

Also telling was the fact that a small gain in payroll was accounted for almost entirely by the addition of 32,000 temporary jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan research organization, crunched the February data and came up with a disturbing finding:

The four previous economic recoveries were accompanied by an increase in labor force participation. Only the current recovery has been accompanied by a decline in labor force participation.

Another disturbing statistic: While the unemployment rate remained unchanged, more people have dropped out of the job hunt altogether and the level of long-term unemployment is about as high as it has been in two decades.

Unemployment is particularly high among young people and minorities.

In short, the benefits of this recovery are not being felt by working class families.

The White House proposes to keep the economy moving by making permanent a series of tax cuts that primarily benefit the well-to-do. That may indeed have some benefit for the side of the economy that is measured by the stock market.

But on the street, where the economy's strength is measured by the number of jobs around to feed and house families, the picture is entirely different.

In the upcoming presidential election we will hear a great deal about the economy and what the candidates will do to improve it.

That's all well and good in the abstract. But what the public deserves to hear is down-to-earth talk about how the candidates plan to create jobs for America's men and women.