[单项选择]Last year’s economy should have won the Oscar for best picture. Growth in gross domestic product was 4.1 percent; profits soared; exports flourished; and inflation stayed around 3 percent for the third year. So why did so many Americans give the picture a lousy B rating The answer is jobs. The macroeconomic situation was good, but the microeconomic numbers were not. Yes, 3 million new jobs were there, but not enough of them were permanent, good jobs paying enough to support a family. Job insecurity was rampant. Even as they announced higher sales and profits, corporations acted as if they were in a tailspin, cutting 516,069 jobs in 1994 alone, almost as many as in the recession year of 1991.
Yes, unemployment went down. But over 1 million workers were so discouraged they left the labor force. More than 6 million who wanted full-time work were only partially employed; and another large group was either overqualified or sheltered behind the euphemism of self-employment. We lost a mi