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President’s Chief Economist’s Own Rhetoric Meets Reality |
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Six months ago on CNN's State of the Union: When the economy starts to recover, we'll begin to see job growth.
Jessica Yellin: "So in plain English, when do you project the recession will end?"
Christina Romer: "Well, you know, we, like most private forecasters, think that real GDP growth will probably turn positive before the end of the year, but that's just the first step, right? You've got to start growing again before you start adding jobs.
But the other thing is you've got to grow quickly to really bring the unemployment rate down. And so that's the other thing we'll be looking at. As you go into 2010, we can't just limp out of this thing, we need to be growing robustly to make sure that the unemployment rate comes down." (CNN's State of the Union interview with Jessica Yellin, 9/2/09)
This morning on ABC's Good Morning America: The economy is growing...
George Stephanopoulos: "Is the economy creating jobs right now?"
Christina Romer: "What we certainly know is the economy's growing. We know that if you go back a year ago, real GDP was falling at over 6% at an annual rate. We learned that in the fourth quarter of 2009 it was growing at almost 6% at an annual rate. Right now the employment numbers look basically stable. What we've always said is we think we're going to see positive job growth by spring."
George Stephanopoulos: "But what is behind it? This seems to be like we're in a new world. You've got this huge growth you talked about in the last quarter, yet the economy isn't creating jobs, and that has created these persistent fears of a jobless recovery." (ABC's Good Morning America interview with George Stephanopoulos, 2/17/10)
...But where are the jobs?
Senator Bayh (D-IN): "If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months." (CBS's Early Show interview with Maggie Rodriguez, 2/15/10)