Using anti-science exuberance, for the last few days, the media have pom-pommed someone’s ethereal projection that the economy had created 200,000 or so jobs in July. The fact that our media would consider 200,000 jobs (which hardly keeps up with population growth) worthy of pom-poms is grotesque enough. Even more appalling is spinning manufactured positive news-cycles for President Obama based on proven nonsense like the ADP’s jobs projections.
Oopsy, Business Insider: Forget GDP, The Real Story Today Was The ADP Jobs Report
If you are wondering why the media are still artificially propping Obama up at the expense of working people-even after he has been safely re-elected-the answer is simple: After investing so much in him, the media must now prove they were right to do so. So when it comes to the economy, the media have created The Obama Curve-a threshold for success heretofore unheard of in media.
But even with a dismal 162,000 jobs created in July, the media are still conspicuously avoiding context and history in order to avoid reporting on just how catastrophic 2013 has been for jobs and economic growth.
1. The Unemployment Rate Dropped Due to People Giving Up Looking for Work
You can’t drop the unemployment rate from 7.6% to 7.4% when the economy is barely creating enough jobs to keep up with population growth. The reason we saw this particular July drop, then, is due to people giving up searching for a job. The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFP) counts those currently working or looking for work as a percentage of the overall population.
Because 37,000 people gave up and dropped out of the job search in July, the LFP fell from 63.5% to 63.4%.
For some insane reason, the unemployment rate is tied to the LFP. In other words, if all of America gave up looking for work, the unemployment would be zero and the media would push for Obama to have a place on Mt. Rushmore.
Some will argue that those dropping out of the LFP are retirees. That can be the case. But the LFP is near a record low under this president, and that is not retirees. If it were, we wouldn’t be seeing record numbers on food stamps and disability.
2. If People Didn’t Quit Looking for Work, Unemployment Rate Would Be 10.7% Today
If the LFP were merely at the same rate as when Obama took office, the unemployment rate today would be 10.7%.
3. The ObamaCare Effect: 65% of Jobs Created In July are Part-Time:
In July we are sad to report that America’s conversation to a part-time worker society is not “tapering”: according to the Household Survey, of the 266K jobs created (note this number differs from the establishment survey), only 35% of jobs, or 92K, were full time. The rest were… not.
Zerohedge also points out that of the 953,000 jobs created thus far in 2013, 77% are part-time.
All year, Obama’s “recovery” has only created 222,000 full time jobs.
4. Obama Promised 5% Unemployment By Now to Pass His $850 Billion Stimulus Boondoggle
In January 2009, Team Obama economists put together a report – half quantitative analysis, half sales pitch — outlining the potential economic impact of the proposed $800 billion stimulus. (See above chart from that report.) If Congress passed the plan, the report forecasted, the economy would generate enough additional demand, output, and employment that two big things would happen:
First, the unemployment rate would never reach 8%. Unfortunately, we hit 10% unemployment in October 2009. Failure number one.
Second, the unemployment rate would return to its long-term “natural rate” of 5% by July 2013 (a jobless rate, it should be noted, above the low points of the Bush and Clinton presidencies).
5. Reagan Recovery Created More Jobs in One Month Than Obama Has All Year
In 1983, as President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies took hold, the American recovery started to roar back to life. This was thanks to Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts and an overall philosophy of getting government out of the way of American ingenuity. The result was that the entire dynamic of an economy that had been in a malaise for nearly a decade completely turned around.
In one month, September of 1983, the Reagan Recovery created 1,114 MILLION jobs.
This was no fluke, either. The next 15 months saw amazing job growth (in thousands): 271, 352, 356, 447, 479, 275, 363, 308, 379, 312, 241, 311, 286, 349, 127.
By contrast, President Obama attacked his inherited recession in the exact opposite way Reagan did. Obama passed onerous regulations, including Dodd-Frank and ObamaCare. Worse, his class warfare rhetoric demanding higher taxes and even more regulation, has never ceased. The uncertainty he creates in the labor market is unprecedented.
Despite the media’s spin, the results have been disastrous for the American people. Thus far, all year, the Obama Recovery has created fewer jobs than Reagan’s recovery created in that single month of September in ’83.
Over seven full months in 2013, only 953,000 jobs have been created.(77% of those part-time)
What the media won’t tell you as they say things like, “Well, we are growing, just not fast enough,” is that it did not have to be like this.
During these same seven months in the second term of his presidency, George W. Bush created over 1.6 million jobs. President Clinton was just shy of two million.
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Obama’s economic record is a disaster, but he feels no pressure to change course because the media have created the Obama Curve in order to avoid pointing out and putting pressure on his failure.
Neither the media nor Obama want to face the reality that big government economic policies are a failure. And that refusal is spreading misery like a plague.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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