Friday saw the release of the November jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The news is that Hurricane Sandy did not affect hiring. 146,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7%, the lowest rate since September of 2008. Revisions brought worse news. 49,000 fewer jobs were created in September and October than originally reported.

Already the media is celebrating and relieved by these numbers, but only graded on the four-year curve created for this president can the news of 146,000 new jobs be something worth celebrating. At this rate, we’re barely keeping up with population growth, and we’re most certainly not keeping up with the 360,000 to 390,000 new jobless claims filed every week.

But we’ve been hustled and bamboozled by the media into believing any number over 100,000 represents a recovery, when prior recoveries have given us 300,000-plus new jobs per month. Those recoveries, however, were generated by the government getting out of the way of the economy. Obama’s bright idea was to micromanage, deficit spend, and hyper-regulate.

But in order to protect Obama from his failure, an entire New Normal and standard for success has been manufactured by a media that will never-ever allow this president to fail, even when he does.

As far as the unemployment rate falling to 7.7%, once again it’s due to the fact that people have given up looking for work. In November alone, a whopping 540,000 dropped out of the workforce. We’re not seeing a drop in unemployment because people are finding work; we’re seeing a drop in the unemployment rate because people have given up: 

Confused why the unemployment rate dropped? The same, favorite BLS adjustment – a drop in the labor force participation rate which declined by 0.2% to 63.6% once again, as the number of people out of the labor increased by over 540K to 88,883,000.ber, the labor participation rate dropped (a bad thing) two-tenths of a point to 63.6%, a three decade low.

If you want to qualify as a recovery, the fact that job growth is barely treading water with population growth and the unemployment rate is lower because people have given up looking for work — fine. But recent history tells us it didn’t have to be this way.

Obama didn’t face an either/or choice. It wasn’t “either” do nothing and face a depression “or” do what he did with the failed stimulus, deficit spending, ObamaCare, etc.

Obama could have done what his predecessors did to roar us out of the doldrums with a real recovery. But he would prefer to demonize Ronald Reagan’s proven ideas than emulate them.

But when you’re an ideologue more interested in enslaving people with government dependence than freeing them through economic liberty, and you know you can count on the media to create the “Obama Curve,” why not?

 

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC