What Are AP's Surveyed Economists Smoking?

Recently, the Associated Press (AP) surveyed 32 economists, and the consensus was that it will be hiring that will sustain economic growth.  In AP's published article entitled "AP survey: Economists confident that hiring gains will help sustain US recovery", the surveyed economists seem to have blinders on.  First of all, we just came off of another missed GDP growth number.  The First Quarter GDP only grew by 2.2% when 3% was expected.  Most all of those economists know that you need at least 2.5% in GDP growth to even start making a dent in the unemployment rate.  Secondly, they have to now that the last employment report was a farce with the amount of discouraged workers growing at a rate that was twice that of job growth.  That report makes two months in a row where the "jobs created" was substantially less than even expected workforce growth.


For the last three years economists have consistently gotten it wrong.  They expected 6% growth in 2010 and we only got 3%. They thought 2011's economy would grow by 3% and we got 1.7%.  This year they expect a 2.1% growth for the full year and we started the year off with another worse than expected number for the First Quarter.  Right now, I wouldn't take any economist's survey seriously,  Obviously, the Hookah pipes are in broad use within the economics community.