Recession Job Losses Higher Than Reported; Revised Figures Show Estimates Off by 32%
The Labor Department said yesterday that 2.2 million payroll jobs were lost in the last recession, a figure that is one-third higher than the government's previous job-loss estimate.</br></br>Officials said they are still at a loss to totally explain how such a huge error could have been made, but William G. Barron Jr., acting commissioner of the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, said that there was "absolutely nothing that would support" a charge that politics influenced the government's statistics-gathering process.</br></br>Nonetheless, the revision is likely to generate political reaction as the presidential campaign moves into its post-primary phase. President Bush promised in 1988 to add 30 million jobs to the economy over the next eight years; after more than three years of his administration fewer than 1 million jobs have been added.</br></br>The new estimate, which was released yesterday as part of the government's annual benchmark revision of its employment statistics, showed that 2.2 million jobs were lost between June 1990, the month before the recession officially began, and January of this year.</br></br>Under the old figures, the job loss for that same period had been put at 1.68 million, 32 percent below the new estimate.