enhanced benefits are out there, folks are taking the benefits as opposed to working. we ll know more about how true that is, because if you look at the states cutting off the enhanced benefits, you ll find that by july 19th or so, most of them will be done. for the unemployment report we get at the beginning of december, we ll know how it fared for august and we ll know whether people are staying home or not for other reasons than the enhanced benefits. there s probably some truth to it because you can t get 15 bucks an hour working at most bars and restaurants. there are lots of complicated reasons why that s good or bad but it may be having some effect on the fact that the job creation rate was not as big last month as it should be. one thing i always want to remind people, don t pay too much attention to the unemployment rate on a month to month basis because the denominator changes. so it s not that important that it s 5.8% as opposed to something higher. let s pull out and look
22,000 and consumer confidence at a 16-year high, i think she d said, wow. i ll take it. what a great record. i think she d say i ll take it, but that would be just the perfect continuation of the previous nine months before that. i mean, if you look at the job creation rate s slowed a little bit. we add a little over a million jobs the last seven months. we added about 1.2 million jobs the seven months before that, so they they have not done anything to mess it up, but as you know, most of what happens in the economy has nothing to do with washington. the stock market is up. the stock market is up in percentage terms, less than it was up in the beginning of the last two presidencies, obama and bush, so i think we re basically the same place that we ve been for the last six or seven years, which is growing at a modest rate with pretty decent jobs
i mean, if you look at the job creation rate, it s actually slowed a little bit. we ve added a little over 1 million jobs the last seven months. we ve added 1.2 million jobs the seven months before that. so, they haven t done anything to mess it up. but, as you know, most of what happens in the economy has nothing to do with washington. the stock market is up. the stock market is up in percentage terms a little less than it was up at the beginning of the last two presidencies. obama and bush. so, i think we re basically the same place we ve been for the last six or seven years which is growing at a modest rate with pretty decent jobs numbers and the stock market has been going up. well, i was simply seeking to establish the baseline that things relative to the economy seem to be going well. now to the question, ed, of how
watch. john kasich as governor of ohio has added 300,000 jobs. just look at states like ftexas. they have a job creation rate of two to three times higher than that as california and new york. if you look at the bureau of labor statistics just between the years of 2007 to 2010, texas added more jobs than 49 states combined. as you know, texas has no corporate or individual income taxes. just look at the states. well, what do you look at, chuck? what i look at is there s a republican primary debate, kind of like asking a bunch of kids if they like ice cream. of course they ll talk about tax cuts but there s a history here. when george bush cut tacks we went into an all-time low and recession. as a small businessman, i m not getting them. tax cuts normally only go to a small group of people who can employ logic and the rest of us are left behind. more to the recession than tax cuts, gary b. had a lot to do with the housing boom busting.
march. that is the weak of the hiring in 15 months. labor force participation dropped to 62.7 percent matching the lowest since 1978 and the fell remember bank if atlanta estimates first quarter grow an zero. flat. zero. for the second year in a row they blamed poor growth on insufficient global warming, on winter on unusually cold winter and going back to november last year, job creation of 321,000 jobs and the administration said it was a harbinger of some things to come. it was not. during the reagan recovery there were 23 mes months of job creation. he had a job creation rate of 1 million when there were 75 million fewer americans. never mind zero growth. we are now being told that 2