The only time the federal government creates jobs is when it hires the people itself. The Tennessee Valley Authority is a good example of that.
But according to this site,
part of the Bureau of Labor Statictics' web site, the average unemployment rate in 2003 was 6.0 percent, which adds up to 8,774,000. If that number is six percent, that means the sum of employed and people who would count as "unemployed" is about 146,200,000.
This raises a few questions.
1) Would John Kerry's administration add nearly 8.8 million people to the federal government's payroll? If so, how? What would he put them to work doing?
2) How would he create 10 million jobs if there are less than nine million unemployed? (Yes, I know there are jobless people that don't count as "unemployed," but the number of those who could still get a job despite not being counted as unemployed probably isn't that great.) Taking into consideration older people retiring and the pre-retirement death rate, I don't think younger people coming of age and legal immigration (which acording to
this excel file has hovered around a million people a year for all ages this decade) would overcome the death and retirement rate to make a net growth of 1.3 million people in four years, since the birthrate wouldn't make a dent in the work force numbers for at least 18 years.
If you ask me, he didn't do any research before spitting out the "10 million" figure, but rather said it because he felt it would make him look good in the eyes of people who want more jobs and don't check numbers--in other words, an emotional appeal.
Now, let's take a look at the "500,000" job creation number. Creating half a million new jobs is a hell of a lot more realistic than 10 million, although I don't know what he would put all those people to work doing either. But if he adds 500,000 jobs, that would bring the number of unemployed down to 8,274,000, if we assume the number of people in the work force stays completely constant and the number of retirements and pre-retirement deaths equals the number of new workers.
That would lower the unemployment rate from an appallingly high 6.0 percent to an amazingly low 5.66 percent.
