This one is seemingly unkillable. God knows the gasbrains that pass for journalists aren't going to bother to check up on it.

So, one more time, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Number of people employed in January, 2001: 137,790,000

Number of people employed in December, 2003: 138,479,000.

Net increase in number of jobs: plus 689,000 (jobs created minus jobs lost).

So where's the problem? Right here:

Number of people in the work force in January, 2001: 143,787,000

Number of people in the work force in December, 2003: 146,878,000

Net increase in work force: 3,091,000

Shortfall between jobs created and new work force members: 2,402,000

See the problem? We aren't losing jobs. We're not creating new jobs fast enough to keep up with the new workers. How this translates into 3 million jobs "lost," is not clear to me, since there are currently more people employed right now than at any time in U.S. history. But I supposed it makes for a good sound bite.

Again, these are the official numbers, not including self-employed, farmers, and others.

If you look at the graphs (check the graph option when loading BLS data from the above link), the increase in labor force rises slowly upward almost as a straight line. There is no sign that it is leveling off, and one assumes the trend will continue.

The graph for employment level, however, peaks in January, 2001, and then drops slightly, and starts going back up in January, 2002. Thereafter it keeps going up, but not at a rate that's needed to keep up with population.