The Dems are crowing about the drop in unemployment numbers.<\/p>\n
But if you look a little further into the numbers, you see that the American job market is not <\/em>better off than it was four years ago. \u00a0Indeed, it’s a lot worse.<\/p>\n On Inauguration Day in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent (up from 4.4% as recently as May of 2007). \u00a0Notwithstanding his promises that Porkulus would cap unemployment at 8.5%, it soared to 10% in October of 2009, and didn’t dip down below 9% in any sustained way until last fall. \u00a0Last month, after three years of Obama, it was at 8.3% – or .2% lower than where he said it’d never get above if we spent what he proposed.<\/p>\n That’s bad.<\/p>\n “But 8.3% is better than 10%, right?”<\/p>\n Sure – if all you’re doing is comparing numbers straight-up. \u00a0But by itself, the unemployment rate is meaningless. \u00a0It’s a percentage of people out of work – but who are those people? \u00a0They are the ones that are participating in the labor market.<\/p>\n And fewer Americans than ever -ever! – are doing that!<\/p>\n So let’s figure the actual percentage of Americans working<\/em>, overall.<\/p>\n January 2009<\/strong>: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Workforce Participation rate when Obama took office was 65.7%. \u00a0That means 34.3% of the workforce wasn’t even trying to participate, through discouragement, disability or whatever case. \u00a0Add to that the 7.8% unemployed, and you reach a figure of 57.1% of the American workforce actually working.<\/p>\n October 2009<\/strong>: \u00a0At this point, the “low point” of the Obama recession, the participation rate was an even 65% just in time for unemployment to hit an even 10%., \u00a055% of the American work force was working.<\/p>\n January, 2012<\/strong>: \u00a0As unemployment stood at 8.3%, the workforce participation rate was 63.7% – the lowest since records have been kept. \u00a0That means that overall employment in the American workforce is now a whopping…<\/p>\n …55.2%.<\/p>\n That’s a fifth of a percent higher than it was at the lowest point <\/em>of the Obama recession.<\/p>\n Almost two full points lower than it was when Barack Obama took office.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n (And five full points lower than June of 2003, the worst <\/em>month of George W. Bush’s before <\/em>the GOP lost the Congress. \u00a0That’s five percent lower employment<\/em>\u00a0overall. \u00a0Six and change if you take one of Bush’s better months. \u00a0And I know, Bush benefitted from a bubble, yadda yadda. \u00a0But…five points!).<\/p>\n The media is spinning nonstop about the “Obama recovery”. \u00a0It’s vapor; in terms of percentage of the American workforce actually working, there is no recovery.<\/p>\n Are you better off than you were four years ago, America? \u00a0No – you’re doing two percent worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Dems are crowing about the drop in unemployment numbers. But if you look a little further into the numbers, you see that the American job market is not better off than it was four years ago. \u00a0Indeed, it’s a lot worse. On Inauguration Day in 2009, when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-capitalism-v-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26308,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26305\/revisions\/26308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}