Time to look at some numbers again…
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Once again, it’s time to look at the numbers.
As we enter the sixth year of our Dear Leader’s “Occupy the White House Golf Tour”, let us review some numbers from the past five years.
In 2008, there were 145 million Americans in the work force, 79.4 million Americans not in the labor force, and the federal debt was $9.4 Trillion.
Today, in early 2014, we have 145 million Americans in the work force, 91.8 million Americans not in the labor force and a federal debt of $17.3 Trillion.
So in five years there has not added any new Americans to the labor force, but there are 12 million more Americans who could be in the labor force who are not, and the federal debt has increased by $7.9 trillion.
So new jobs created over the past five years is zero. As you have often heard every times the new unemployment numbers come out, the US economy needs to create 120,000 jobs a month just to cover new workers entering the work force. Over five years, that comes to 7.2 Million jobs. Given that the number of Americans in the work force has remained flat, the Obama Economy has not only failed to create any new jobs, it has actively removed jobs. This is an appalling performance, especially since the last recession ending in mid 2009, so for most of the last five years, American should have been in an economic recovery. A period were traditionaly there is not just job growth, but rapid and strong job growth. That has been the pattern in every recession/recovery for the past 100 years. This includes the recession of the late 1970s, which was the worst recession since the Great Drepression and the roaring recovery that occured in the early 1980s. Why is is the Obama non-recovery from the second worst recession the sole exception to economic history?
Let’s look at the numbers again…
The March unemployment numbers are out and the federal U3 number dropped from 7.7% in February to 7.6%. That should be good news, still over two points over what our Dear Leader promised us we would have if we passed his massive porkulus act, but still moving in the in right direction.
So why did the architect of the Obama economic plan, Austan Goolsbee, call the March unemployment numbers a “punch to the gut”?
To answer that,we need to look at some more numbers. Like the number of jobs the Federal BLS says were added in March, which is 88,000. Since you have been paying attention, you know that the US economy needs to generate at least 120,000 new jobs a month just to break even. So how did the U3 rate drop a tenth of a percent when we missed the break even point by over 33,000 jobs? The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the U3 (and 5 other “U” rates) rate as a percentage of the labor force. While the BLS added 88,000 jobs, it dropped 630,000 workers from the labor force. That gives us a net loss of over a half million workers from the US economy in March 2013. Just what would the Federal BLS U3 number be if those 630,000 Americans were still counted in the labor force? One estimate has it at 11.7%. That is Carter era employment numbers. It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama’s Worst Recovery since the Great Depression is catching up with the Worst Recession since the Great Depression.
Not a shining moment for the Obama regime and it’s Keynesian economy policies. Not enough for them to give up on those failed policies though. For the left, their political agenda always trumps the truth.