{"id":34040,"date":"2013-02-04T05:49:04","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T11:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34040"},"modified":"2013-02-04T09:49:28","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T15:49:28","slug":"this-is-your-obama-recovery-welcome-to-2013-same-as-201220112010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34040","title":{"rendered":"This Is Your Obama &#8220;Recovery&#8221;:  Welcome To 2013, Same As 2012\/2011\/2010&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The BLS numbers for January came out last Friday. \u00a0And they showed what pretty much everyone expected them to show after the holiday and the election wore off; the economy still sucks.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?attachment_id=28476\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-28476\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-28476\" title=\"DoingFine\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/DoingFine.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/DoingFine.gif 540w, http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/DoingFine-300x232.gif 300w, http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/DoingFine-386x300.gif 386w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The headline story is that unemployment crept up again, <a href=\"http:\/\/data.bls.gov\/timeseries\/LNS14000000\">to 7.9%<\/a>, after dropping (putatively) to 7.7% in November.<\/p>\n<p>But in my book the real story is this; even with the top-line unemployment number under 8%, the work force participation rate is stuck at 63.6%, right where it&#8217;s been for three months after blipping above and below that figure for most of the past year.<\/p>\n<p>Which means when you take the 7.9% unemployment rate out of that low labor force participation rate, you get<strong>\u00a058.58% of the workforce actually working<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>That compares to: 60.58% &#8211; exactly two points higher &#8211; when Obama took office (with an unemployment rate of 7.8%). \u00a0That translates to six million fewer people working in the labor force now, even with an unemployment rate that&#8217;s supposedly nearly the same. \u00a0Or to \u00a058.50% in October 2009, when unemployment peaked at 10%.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s right; even with the unemployment rate supposedly two points lower than the recessions nadir, the actual portion of the population working is nearly unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>And to show how in-set this recession is? \u00a0Here&#8217;s a list of<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?attachment_id=34042\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-34042\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34042 alignleft\" title=\"Averages\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Averages.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"228\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the\u00a0<em>average\u00a0<\/em>of monthly employment rates (after taking the unemployed out of the participating labor force) is\u00a0<em>lower than it was when the recession supposedly bottomed out<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t a recovery. \u00a0This is an extended coma, with neither improvement nor much deterioration beyond the already awful state we&#8217;re already in.<\/p>\n<p>And for 53% of the American people, it was apparently just good enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The BLS numbers for January came out last Friday. \u00a0And they showed what pretty much everyone expected them to show after the holiday and the election wore off; the economy still sucks. The headline story is that unemployment crept up again, to 7.9%, after dropping (putatively) to 7.7% in November. But in my book the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34040","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=34040"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34052,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34040\/revisions\/34052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}