This Is Your Obama Economy: August Edition
By Mitch Berg
The employment numbers are out today.
Obama’s supporters are saying “Yaaaay, 8.1%” out one side of their mouth…
…and “thank Gaia these numbers didn’t come out before The Light Worker’s speech yesterday” out the other.
While unemployment is down 0.2% to 8.1%, that would seem to be entirely due to the workforce participation rate also dropping 0.2%, to an all-time low of 63.5%.
Let’s put this in context: this means that 58.36% of the workforce is actually working. Not only is this 2.22% lower than when Obama took office in 2009 – it’s worse than when the economy had an ostensible 10% unemployment rate in October of 2009 (when the participation rate was 65%).
Most telling, perhaps? Since mid-2010, we had not been above 58.5% of the workforce employed, except for a few months earlier this year, when the employment rate bounced between 58.5 and 58.6. It’s been steadily down since June, as the participation rate has resumed its slide.
The Dems are trying to put lipstick on the pig, of course; Extreme-DFL Representative Jim Davnie of Minneapolis tweeted this morning:
Jobs 8/12: Up 96K, Jobs 8/08: Down 84K. Net 180K jobs to the good. Yes better off than 4 yrs ago. Imagine if #GOP worked to help
In August of 2008, the labor force participation rate was 66.1%; today, it’s 63.5%. That’s 2.6% lower. The unemployment rate was 6.1% (and getting worse), two points lower than today. The actual employment rates? 62.07% then, 58.35% today. Go ahead, Rep. Davnie; make my day, and keep using these stats in public.
If the participation rate drops low enough, we’ll technically have full employment, I guess.
Upside, sorta? I actually heard some of the morning news people mentioning the full context of the unemployment number drop – it’s a function of the number of people leaving the work force – this morning. Maybe even they can’t ignore it anymore?
September 7th, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, says that Obama is “Building an economy meant to last from the middle-class out”.
That is a flat-out lie. Let me count the ways.
1) Obama is borrowing a trillion dollars a year. This is the exact opposite of building an economy to last. Both Keynesian and Classical economics teach that current borrowing depresses future growth.
2) Any “economy building” Obama does requires the cooperation of a congress and an opposition party he has disdained. Obama is doing nothing.
3) The middle class has seen its household wealth decline since Obama took office.
4) The careers that lead to a middle-class life style have been gutted since Obama took office.
5) Obama’s refusal to negotiate with the people’s congress means that taxes on the middle class will increase dramatically on the 1st of January 2013.
Obama is kicking the middle class to the gutter, he ain’t building anything other than comfortable retirements for his cronies.
September 7th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Yet, that arena was full of his drooling sycophants from the entitlement generation.
September 7th, 2012 at 6:16 pm
6) Middle class incomes have dropped faster during the “recovery”, when Obama began to “Build an economy meant to last from the middle-class out”, than they did during the recession.
This Obama guy makes Jimmy-frikkin’-Carter look like Adam Smith.
September 8th, 2012 at 7:52 pm
7)Gas is $3.999 on the Range. Where you have to Drive 30 miles to see a movie, or get groceries, get school supplies and drywall but, Oberstarr made sure that they have a few nice bike paths so they can get all that stuff without driving.