640,000 Jobs Never Existed, U.S. Admits
WASHINGTON — The Labor Department has solved the mystery of the 640,000 jobs that suddenly disappeared from the American economy. Red-faced bureaucrats now say they were only imaginary jobs to begin with.
A year ago, the department said job losses during the last recession were worse than originally reported--an announcement seized upon by Democrats to back candidate Bill Clinton’s contention that the recession had been much more severe than the Bush Administration was willing to admit.
It turns out that the original numbers were closer to right than the revision was.
The department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to set the record straight today in its annual update on economic history.
Today’s revisions are expected to show that the last recession--which began June, 1990, and ended March, 1991--cost about 1.7 million jobs.
That was the figure the bureau was using before last year’s revision, when it boosted the recession’s job loss to 2.3 million.
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