Milwaukee workers like Mr. Konieczny — with newfound opportunities and profound ambivalence about them — say a lot about the state of the economy and the presidential campaign. After considerable hesitation, the economy began to produce more jobs about a year ago, as President Bush points out at every opportunity. But many of those jobs don’t pay as much or offer as much security as the manufacturing jobs on which Milwaukee once depended, a point Democratic challenger John Kerry makes just as often.
The economy is behaving differently than in the past, and government snapshots give each candidate facts by the dozen to support his case. Mr. Bush likes a survey of households that shows more jobs now than the day he took office; Mr. Kerry likes a survey of employers that shows fewer. Mr. Bush says the new jobs are good ones; Mr. Kerry says they’re not. The murkiness of the statistics and politicians’ propensity to stretch the facts create a confusing picture as the election nears. But the outcome depends less on the dueling statistics than on what voters in battleground states experience and think about the economy.