As Obama Crows, Real Story Is 10.5 Mil Jobs Deficit
Jobs:
Of course it's good news that 243,000 new jobs were created in January,
shaving the unemployment rate to 8.3%. But thanks to massive policy
errors by the White House, we're still way below where we should be.
President Obama, speaking in Arlington, Va., immediately took credit
for the bullish report, crowing that "altogether, we've added 3.7
million new jobs over the last 23 months."
The president went on to say: "We can't go back to the policies that
led to the recession. And we can't let Washington stand in the way of
our recovery."
"Our" recovery? And "We can't go back to the policies that led to the
recession"? The cause of the recession was, in fact, housing policies
put in place by President Clinton and aggressively supported by
Democrats in Congress, including former Sen. Barack Obama.
How soon we forget. These were the policies that led to the housing
meltdown, the financial crisis and, ultimately, the deep recession we're
still climbing out of.
Yet Obama's "blame Bush" theme will be the Democrats' strategy for the 2012 campaign. So get used to it.
Truth is, by now we should have created millions more jobs than we
have. But Obama's $836 billion stimulus, his botched industry bailouts,
his failed "green" energy policies, his regulatory siege on business,
and his disastrous attacks on Wall Street and entrepreneurs have made
this the worst recovery in history.
The recovery began in June 2009, just months after Obama took office and before his stimulus took effect.
According
to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the economy is
just 0.7% above its previous high. Usually at this point in an
expansion, it's 13.5% above the last peak. In other words, thanks to
Obama's policies, we're missing about $1.8 trillion in GDP — or roughly
$5,760 for every man, woman and child.
Far worse for most Americans is the jobs depression that has
accompanied Obamanomics. As the chart shows, we've suffered a jobs
implosion greater than any since World War II.
Obama likes to blame his predecessor for this. And true enough, 4.4
million jobs disappeared during the 2007-08 panic. But after Obama took
office, an additional 4.3 million jobs disappeared. So when Obama says
"we've added 3.7 million new jobs," he's not giving you the full story.
We are still 5.6 million jobs below where we were at the peak in
2007. Add to that the 4.9 million new jobs that would have had to be
created just to soak up new entrants into the workforce, and all told we
have a jobs deficit of 10.5 million.
As for the 8.3% jobless rate, remember this: The month he entered
office, Obama's advisers vowed unemployment would remain below 8% if we
passed his stimulus. Congress did as he asked, and unemployment promptly
surged above 10%.
The 8.3% number is a mirage. In fact, unemployment rate is declining
in large part because millions of people have given up hope and left the
workforce. Last month alone, they totaled 1.2 million.
Since Obama took office, 4.7 million people have stopped looking for
work. Add them in, and the real unemployment rate suddenly doesn't look
so good: 11%.
And when you add up the 12.7 million unemployed, the 4.7 million no
longer looking for work and the 10.5 million who can't find full-time
positions, that's 28 million people — for a jobless rate of 17%.
Hardly something to crow about.
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