New jobs numbers released Oct. 8 show President George W. Bush is nearly 7 million jobs short of the job predictions his economic advisers made in February 2002 when Bush pushed through his tax cuts.

The 96,000 jobs created in September were less than two-thirds the jobs needed just to keep up with population growth – and far from the 306,000 new jobs Bush promised to create each month, according to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis of September unemployment figures by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“Today’s employment report amplifies the drumbeat of bad news for America’s workers,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “For the laid-off high-tech employee in Ohio and the unemployed mill worker in Maine, this is an unexpectedly painful report.”

Larry Mishel, president of the labor-backed EPI, said “September ‘s job growth indicates a weak economy and it is substandard by any benchmark. One minimal benchmark is that the number of jobs should grow as fast as the working-age population, to keep unemployment from rising.

“With our working-age population growing around 1.2 percent each year, the economy needs to produce 135,000-150,000 jobs each month” to prevent unemployment from rising, he added.

While the U.S. economy continues to lose good jobs, Bush is responding with the same failed economic polices, said Sweeney. As good jobs are going overseas, Bush has given giant corporations tax incentives for shipping American jobs abroad. In contrast, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said as president, he will close corporate tax loopholes that reward companies for exporting jobs and will cut corporate tax rates to encourage companies to create more U.S. jobs.

The economy lost 18,000 manufacturing jobs and 12,000 information jobs in September – jobs that pay well and provide benefits. Meanwhile, temporary, low-wage jobs rose by 33,000. Since Bush became president, the U.S. economy has lost more than 2.7 million manufacturing jobs and 558,000 information jobs and Bush is on track to become the first president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to end his term with a net job loss.

Nearly 13 million people are unemployed or under-employed, a figure that barely has budged throughout 2004. More than 220,000 people dropped out of the labor force last month, while the share of the workforce composed of workers holding two or more jobs has increased. And the number of workers who have been unemployed for at least six months rose again in September , to 1.7 million. Fully one in five unemployed workers has been unemployed for at least six months.

This was the final monthly jobs report before the presidential election. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8.003 million people were unemployed in September – compared to 5.956 million unemployed at the beginning of Bush’s term in January 2001.