Perhaps It's Amazing Any of Us Are Working

From the Economic Policy Institute through Jobwatch.org:

After a few months of healthy job growth, employment grew by just 112,000 jobs in June 2004. The employment growth that began in September 2003 has not been vigorous enough to reduce unemployment, which has remained at 5.6% since January 2004, the same rate as when the recovery began in November 2001 and far higher than the 4.2% level when the recession began in March 2001. Unfortunately, underemployment in the form of involuntary part-time work, discouraged workers, and other marginally attached workers (i.e., those who have looked for work in the last year but are not counted as unemployed) has increased. Specifically, the total underemployment rate was 9.6% in June 2004, up from 9.4% in November 2001 when the recovery began, and far higher than the 7.3% in March 2001 when the recession began.

Emphasis mine but... holy shit, Batman. Does this really sound like a robust recovering economy to you?

Just for my own information, I would ADORE seeing a jobs or economy report that strictly segregates out any job created by the so-called War on Terror or Homeland Security. If we did, the numbers above would be far, far, far worse than they are. If that's true, there are some unpleasant realities to face like, "Is the nation going bankrupt because of the War on Terror on top of overall Bush mismanagement?"

[Ed. Note: Hey, before you carp, I'm a writer not an economist. If you don't believe me, look at my checkbook.]