a President and will send the other to defeat. It is unfortunate that our most important mission over the last 3+ years, Afganistan, has been relegated to sideshow status, so much so that no whatever happens there this weekend will hardly matter.
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Political Spotlight on Jobs Report
By LEIGH STROPE
AP Labor Writer
WASHINGTON - U.S. employers probably increased their hiring slightly in September, economists said in advance of jobs figures being released Friday, the last politically charged employment report before Election Day.
Analysts predicted the Labor Department report would show business payrolls growing overall by about 150,000 last month, up from the 144,000 net jobs added in August. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 5.4 percent.
A big uncertainty is the hurricanes in Florida last month and the potential havoc on the employment data. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, said the hurricanes could shave as much as 50,000 off payroll figures, which has occurred in the past.
Though 1.7 million jobs have been added in the past year, there are 913,000 fewer jobs than when President Bush took office in January 2001.
That's a big political issue, especially in Rust Belt battleground states that have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs during Bush's presidency.
Bush's Democratic challenger, John Kerry, widened his lead on the question of who would create jobs. In a new AP-Ipsos Public Affairs poll, 54 percent of respondents favored Kerry on job creation, and 40 percent Bush. Less than half of likely voters, 47 percent, approve of Bush's performance on the economy.
Friday's jobs report won't be as strong as economists would like at this point in the recovery from the 2001 recession. Economists want to see 250,000 new jobs or more per month. But payrolls have lagged far below that.
Some economists don't expect an improvement any time soon. The period from September to December "historically has seen the heaviest job cutting," said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a job placement and research firm.
Planned job cuts tracked by the firm shot to an eight-month high of 107,863 in September, 41 percent more than a year ago.
"September to December is typically a volatile period for the job market, a fact that will likely be evidenced in Friday's government report on jobs," Challenger said.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
