The U.S. Labor Department reports that nonfarm payroll employment increased by a mere 112,000 jobs last month—less than half of consensus estimates. The department also revised downward its estimate of May job growth, adding fuel to concerns that both the number and the quality of jobs created in the current tax-cut driven economic recovery is anemic by historical standards and has left millions of working Americans out in the cold.

The current 5.6 percent unemployment rate hasn't budged since November 2001, the month when the recovery began, and is substantially higher than the 4.2 percent level registered prior to the last recession, the Economic Policy Institute notes in a July 2 news release. And these figures don't capture the true extent of the problem—the millions of Americans now settling for involuntary part-time work or those not counted in the survey because they have given up hope of finding employment, EPI warns. This category, known as underemployment, now affects 9.6 percent of the workforce and has grown since the start of the recovery.

The Bush administration called the tax cut package, which was passed in May 2003 and took effect in July 2003, its "Jobs and Growth Plan," yet 1.2 million jobs have disappeared since the recession began 39 months ago, EPI stresses. That marks the "greatest sustained job loss since the Great Depression."

July 2, 2004