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If it were not for the economic policies of George W. Bush, Republican President Herbert Hoovers record might have remained the province of historians. But the current occupant of the White House is challenging the negative job creation legacy of the president who governed during the Great Depression.

Last week, the numbers confirmed the suspicion and now its official: George W. Bush is the first to preside over a net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover.

"Whether he wins re-election in November or not, this president has left a shameful legacy to the American worker," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "Instead of using the most powerful office in the world to set policies conducive to job creation, he has done the opposite. Now good jobs are fleeing overseas. He should be ashamed. Instead he is unapologetic and indifferent."

The U.S. Labor Department on October 8 reported that 96,000 jobs were created in September, well below the average estimate of 150,000 new jobs expected.

"This is a weak and disappointing number," said ABC news reporter Betsy Stark. "Job growth needs to be around 150,000 a month just to keep up with population growth. This will raise questions about the strength of the economy."

Since January 2001, the private sector has lost 1.6 million net jobs. Some 1.7 million workers have been unemployed for six months or longer.

Now that 2.7 million factory jobs have gone offshore in the past three years, employers are gearing up for the next big outsourcing wave: service jobs. The Union Labor and Service Trades Department, AFL-CIO, cites a University of California study that estimates 14 million service jobs will flow overseas in the next 10 years, representing 11 percent of the total work force. The biggest names in banking, computers, data processing, energy, management consulting, software and telecommunications have already started. American Express, Bank of America, Citicorp, Dell, IBM, Motorola, Shell Oil, Ernst and Young, General Electric, Federal Express, Oracle, SBC and Bell South have shipped tens of thousands of jobs off to Russia, China, India, Mexico and Malaysia.

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