by James Parks, Aug 18, 2006

If you visit the White House website, you’ll find a lot of cheerleading about how well the economy is doing. And you can be sure you’ll hear more of the same when President Bush meets with his senior economic advisers this weekend at Camp David.

But the American public isn’t buying the hype. Recent polling for the AFL-CIO shows:

• 60 percent of swing voters say they are very or fairly dissatisfied with the economy.
• The same percentage say their incomes are falling behind the cost of living.
• 30 percent pick jobs, the economy, health care and drug costs as issues that will determine whom they support for Congress—with only 21 percent selecting Iraq and 19 percent naming terrorism as issues determining how they will vote.
• Among all voters, 62 percent say they worry often about rising gas prices and soaring oil company profits. Some 54 percent worry frequently about the difficulties families face in paying for health care.
• A huge 82 percent say they are very or somewhat concerned about the economic outlook for children and the next generation.

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center published in today’s Washington Post  shows economic issues, such as the price of gasoline and anxiety over the economy, are proving more powerful in shaping voter attitudes.

Specifically, the poll shows Republicans are losing significant support among married mothers. This group now says they support Democrats for Congress by a 50 percent to 38 percent margin. This is a complete turnaround since 2002, when the same group backed Republicans by 53 percent to 36 percent.

This kind of economic angst is being felt strongly in communities across the nation where layoffs are occurring, says Louis Uchitelle, author of The Disposable American. Speaking in Washington, D.C., on Thursday evening, Uchitelle, a New York Times reporter, says layoffs are necessary in a global economy, but U.S. employers are overusing them simply to make the bottom line look better.
 
Policymakers, unions and corporate executives have acquiesced in accepting mass layoffs as a fact of life, when they don’t have to be, Uchitelle says. Policymakers fall back on the excuse that workers need to be retrained to fill the jobs the new global economy is producing. But the reality is there just aren’t enough good jobs now for the skilled workers we have.
 
The estimated 30 million workers who are laid off represent a huge loss of talent and productivity, says Uchitelle. To turn around the massive impact of these layoffs, national policies must  promote full employment, such as making trade agreements that level the playing field rather than promote the loss of jobs.
 
Finally, he says, the nation’s leaders must face the question of whether the private sector can produce enough family-supporting jobs for everyone who wants one. And if we find they can’t, the federal government should step in and create jobs for people, such as building roads and repairing bridges. 
 
Underscoring Uchitelle’s comments, recent economic indicators are pointing to slowness in growth and continuing decline in consumer purchasing power. The nation’s manufacturing sector continues to lose jobs, with Ford Motor Co. announcing today that it partially shut down plants in the United States and Canada in the fourth quarter. The company says fourth-quarter production will be down 21 percent from last year. 
 
Further:

• The nation’s trade deficit for June was $64.8 billion, the fifth-largest monthly deficit on record, according to the Commerce Department. Through the first half this year, the trade deficit has run at an annual rate of $768 billion, putting it on track to surpass last year’s record $716.7 billion.
• The nation’s payrolls increased by a paltry 113,000 in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, providing yet another month of evidence that the pace of U.S. job creation has significantly downshifted. In 2005, excluding the two months depressed by hurricanes, monthly employment grew by 190,000 jobs on average, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 
• The unemployment rate grew to 4.8 percent in July, according to BLS. The growth in joblessness is concentrated among African American workers and rose from 9 percent to 9.5 percent, the highest rate for that group since November 2005.
• Economic growth slowed to 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2006, down from 5.6 percent in the previous quarter, according to data on the gross domestic product from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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