Obama's Low Expectations On Jobs
Employment: The White House spins the new job numbers as evidence the economy is coming back from the Bush recession. Truth is, the economy continues to struggle against the weight of Obama's misguided policies.
Friday's numbers showed employment climbing 200,000 and the jobless rate dropping for the second month in a row, to 8.5%. Fully 30 months into the recovery, any good jobs news is welcome. But this latest report isn't much to cheer about. After all, Obama once promised unemployment would be around 6% once his stimulus plan kicked in. And the current rate is still much higher than the post-World War II average of 5.8%.
Still, Obama's top economic adviser, Alan Krueger, says the report "provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal," and that "it is critical that we continue the economic policies that are helping us to dig our way out of the deep hole."
As long as the economy shows signs of life, this is sure to be Obama's signature campaign theme. To wit: Republican laissez-faire policies led to a recession that was so deep it took a very long time to recover. But my policies are working. Stay the course.
If that were true, then why are so many indicators worse today than when the Obama recovery officially started back in June 2009?
The labor force, for example, has shrunk by more than 840,000 over the past 30 months — it fell 170,000 in just the past two months. That's virtually unheard of in previous recoveries. At a similar point in the Reagan recovery, the labor force had expanded by more than 4 million. The labor force participation rate — a measure of how many are employed or looking — is now just 64%, well below the long-term average. When you adjust for that unusually low participation rate, unemployment would be more like 11.5%.
A separate Bureau of Labor Statistics measure that includes all not normally counted as unemployed — such as discouraged and underemployed workers — puts the real unemployment rate at an astounding 15.2%.
Far from rescuing the economy, Obama's massive spending hikes, towering deficits and expansive regulations managed to turn what should have been a normal recovery into an historic slog. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had it right when it said that "eventually our economy will recover, America always does. But President Obama's policies have slowed the recovery and created misery for 24 million Americans who are unemployed, or stuck in part-time jobs."
Indeed, the only way Obama can make these mediocre results look good is by setting the country's expectations so low than even a tiny step forward seems like a giant leap. He mustn't get away with it. |
