President who speak with forked tongue tried to put a positive spin on the rotten jobs data today. Of the 80,000 jobs created, 30% are temporary jobs. The real unemployment is 14.9%.
President Obama said our 80,000 new jobs this month is a step in the right direction. He must be talking baby steps. He thinks he is moving us forward but he is almost in reverse. Romney was on target when he said the jobs report was more like a “kick in the gut.”
Since the recession ended, mostly under Obama’s leadership, the economy has lost five million jobs. Between January 2008 and February 2010, 8.8 million jobs were lost while only regaining 3.8 million. [Seattle Pi]
The economy has added about 137,000 jobs a month since it hit rock bottom and at that rate we’ll have our economy back in a hundred years. We’ll be like the Cubs – as one announcer said, anyone can have a bad century.
The labor force participation rate is down to 63.8% from about 66% – millions have left the work force, are no longer counted in the rolls, and many have gone on disability. If these millions of long term unemployed were counted in the unemployment numbers, the rate would go from 8.2% to almost 11%.
Last December a correlation was found between unemployment benefits running out and social security disability claims rising. [WSJ] Last quarter, social security disability claims increased 22%.
The Obama administration changed the rules around Social Security Disability making it easier to get if you are traumatized from being unemployed. Those are people who will never return to the work force.
The highest unemployment numbers are in construction so President Obama would like to spend more of China’s money and our grandchildren’s money on infrastructure projects. It worked so well the first time. Obama would have us believe the increase in jobs was because of the carelessly-spent Stimulus as opposed to the normal swing in the economy. Meanwhile he ignores the net loss of 5 million jobs.
Obama won’t let the free market work and has done everything in his power to block it. Obamacare and the Bush tax cuts are sending enormous uncertainty into the markets and job creators are not interested in expanding in this climate. If he wants to improve jobs, why not drill like they are doing in North Dakota or stop the EPA from shutting down coal for starters or how about building the Keystone pipeline?
We are moving FORWARD but it’s at a snail’s pace, and it wouldn’t take much for us to fall over the fiscal cliff.
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