{"id":30301,"date":"2012-09-07T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30301"},"modified":"2012-09-07T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:52:09","slug":"this-is-your-obama-economy-august-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30301","title":{"rendered":"This Is Your Obama Economy: August Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The employment numbers are out today.<\/p>\n

Obama’s supporters are saying “Yaaaay, 8.1%” out one side of their mouth…<\/p>\n

…and “thank Gaia these numbers didn’t come out before\u00a0<\/em>The Light Worker’s speech yesterday” out the other.<\/p>\n

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%.<\/p>\n

Let’s put this in context: \u00a0this means that 58.36% of the workforce is actually working. \u00a0 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%).<\/p>\n

Most telling, perhaps? \u00a0Since 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. \u00a0It’s been steadily down since June, as the participation rate has resumed its slide.<\/p>\n

The Dems are trying to put lipstick on the pig, of course; Extreme-DFL Representative Jim Davnie of Minneapolis tweeted<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n

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<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In August of 2008, the labor force participation rate was 66.1%; today, it’s 63.5%. \u00a0That’s 2.6% lower. \u00a0The unemployment rate was 6.1% (and getting worse), two points lower than today. \u00a0The actual employment rates? \u00a062.07% then, 58.35% today. \u00a0Go ahead, Rep. Davnie; make my day, and keep using these stats in public.<\/p>\n

If the participation rate drops low enough, we’ll technically have full employment, I guess.<\/p>\n

Upside, sorta? I actually heard some of the morning news people mentioning the full context of the\u00a0unemployment\u00a0number drop – it’s a function of the number of people leaving the work force – this morning. \u00a0Maybe even they can’t ignore it anymore?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0The 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30301","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=30301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30303,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30301\/revisions\/30303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}