[ubiquity0]

Originally posted by fintstone
It really doesn't matter if some jobs were lost in 2004 if the net for the year is 2.3 million more employed than before...now does it?

True- the stats reflect net gain. However net job gain isn't the same as net employment gain (1.7 million).

"Total employment, at 140.2 million in December, was little changed over the
month but was 1.7 million higher than a year earlier. The proportion of the
working-age population that was employed (the employment-population ratio) was
62.4 percent in December, about the same as a year earlier. Both the civilian
labor force, at 148.2 million in December, and the labor force participation
rate, at 66.0 percent, were about unchanged from the previous month."

"Over the year, the number of persons who held more than one job increased
by 574,000 to 7.8 million, not seasonally adjusted. These multiple jobholders
represented 5.6 percent of total employment in December."

Unemployment dropped overall in 2004 by 1/4 million:
December '03: 8,399,000
December '04: 8,047,000

Also interesting:
"The number of persons who work part time for economic reasons, at 4.5 mil-
lion, was about unchanged in December but was down by 308,000 over the year.
This category includes persons who indicated that they would like to work full
time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or be-
cause they were unable to find full-time jobs."

(http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm)