joining me live now neil irwin, financial reporter for "the washington post."ake on the numbers and what they say about the state of the economy overall right now. >> we're flatlining. we have very low growth, and as a result we created no net jobs in august. the truth is we're not in a real recovery. we're in a kind of muddling along period. we had .7% growth in the first half of the year. in the second half it's hard to see how we get much above that. that's a challenging situation. given the hole we're in, we're not digging out but staying stuck in the hole. >> your latest article in "the washington post" said the data was not as bad as it might appear in first glance. how so? >> there were zero net jobs created in august, however, there was a verizon strike. that kept 45,000 people off the payrolls, so there was job growth of 45,000 once those temporary striking workers come back. that said, this is really not a strong period. we've seen several months in a row of weak job growth, and 45,000 doesn't cut it given the millions of unemployed people we have. >>

"washington post" financial reporter neil irwin joins me now. now we this drop on the european markets yesterday. ours being closed for the holiday. when are we going to see an end to this wild market movement? is there any way to put a predictor on that? >> unfortunately not something we can control in the united states. we'll see an end to the wild swings when europeans get their act together. when there's a sense european governments are finding a way to resolve their debt crises that doesn't result in some catastrophic decline in european markets. the truth is the news out of the u.s. was pretty good. we got a good report on the tourist industry, that it was accelerating in august. that wasn't enough to counteract the downdraft from the crisis in europe. >> europeans are probably waiting to see if americans can get their act together. when we talk about what the president is going to say on thursday night, do you think that president obama can play the role of ben bernanke, has in so many times, as we come to the end of q-3 coming up at the

a piece written by neil irwin. and "the christian science monitor." an article about finding work. "which way to the jobs?" that's the latest story in "the christian science monitor. "high unemployment will last. and this is why. to reduce unemployment the economy must create enough new jobs to absorb the existing out-of-work and entrants into the labor market. shierholz has calculated how many jobs would be needed to lower unemployment to 5% over five years. her estimate is 16.9 million. that's an average of 282000 jobs a month. " that's a piece this morning in "the washington post." also here's the opinion section of "the washington times." "happy leisure day" they say is a day about taking a break from work not celebrating unions. we'll talk about right-to-work states, nonunion states, and we'll get a perspective on that as well. next the impact of regulations on jobs. caller: yes, the problem that we have is that the government wants to regulate carbon dioxide. it will cost lots of money to regulate that. in fact, there's not a whole lot of technology to do that. in fact, it is