A report signed by President Bush and released by The President's Council of Economic Advisor's last month predicted that 320,000 jobs would be created each month of 2004.  However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 21,000 jobs were created in February.   Under the Bush Administration, 2.3 million jobs have been lost.

Schakowsky said, “It is pathetic that President Bush is talking about an economic recovery when only 21,000 jobs were created in February.  That’s an average of 420 jobs per state.”

According to the Center for American Progress: 

• Just weeks after the President predicted the nation would add 320,000 jobs each month of 2004, the Department of Labor reported this morning that "America's unemployment rate remained stuck at 5.6% in February as the economy added a paltry 21,000 positions." Not only did the new jobs report fall short of the White House's explicit promise, but it fell short even of Wall Street's conservative expectation of 125,000 jobs. Also, nearly 8.2 million people remained out of work, and last month alone 400,000 of the jobless stopped looking for work because the economy has become so bleak. The average time they have been unemployed was 20.3 weeks – "the highest average duration of joblessness in 20 years." The already decimated manufacturing sector lost another 3,000 positions.
• President Bush visited Bakersfield, CA yesterday – a city with an unemployment rate of 12.8% that has added 4,400 workers to its unemployment rolls over the last 3 years – and "rhapsodized...about the possibility that a stock-car firm in [Bakersfield] will add two new jobs this year." Bush said that the prospect that chassis maker Les DenHerder would hire two more employees was "really good news" and "a sign a lot of people are confident about our future." The event, along with five similar "conversations" held by Bush this year, was an attempt "to make the case that his tax cuts were good for the economy even though they have failed to produce the jobs he forecast."  But real economic indicators suggest a much bleaker jobs picture. Nationwide, the economy has still lost more than 2 million jobs over the course of Bush's term – virtually assuring that, by the end of his term, Bush will have "the worst record on jobs since President Herbert Hoover." As a column by American Progress economist Christian Weller notes, working families just aren't buying the Administration's rhetoric anymore.
• A chronological look at the White House's policy response to the jobs crisis is instructive: first the Administration claimed that sending jobs U.S. jobs overseas is "a good thing" for the American economy. Then the President tried to distance himself from his own prediction that his policies would create 2.6 million jobs by 2004. Then, the Administration considered reclassifying low-wage fast food workers as "manufacturing workers" to make the statistics look better. And now, even with the tax cuts for the wealthy failing to create the jobs that it promised, the President is touring the country saying a $1 trillion plan to make the tax cuts permanent is the only economic prescription that will work.
• While the President has touted his commitment to job training, his latest budget proposes cutting funding to states used to retrain workers who have been laid off. The proposed funding level is 11% lower in actual dollars than it was in the 2002 budget. But, because so many more people are unemployed today than three years ago, the actual problem is even worse. The average dislocated worker program expenditure was $274 in 2001 but just $167 today. This means, at a time when long-term unemployment is at its highest level in 20 years, fewer people can obtain the training they need to reenter the workforce. The budget cuts come on top of the White House's efforts to slash more than $1 billion out of job training over the last three years.