The unemployment rate went down from 8.3 to 8.1% Yay! More evidence of progress on the slow road to recovery! Well, all partisanship aside, there was no good news to be found anywhere in the jobs report this morning. The fall in unemployment is the result of 96,000 new jobs being created and 368,000 people "giving up" their job search and leaving the unemployment rolls. Those people have spent their 99 weeks and are moving on to more stable forms of unemployment, like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Remember, SSDI is no longer just a safety net for those that are physically unable to work. It's now a way of life for people who need only claim to be "too depressed" or "anxious" to work. Keep in mind that only 1-3% of people who go onto SSDI ever return to the workforce.
Another chunk of those 368,000 people are on other forms of welfare and are now free from looking for work thanks to a stroke of Obama's pen in mid July. This was an executive order that ends a requirement Congress put in place as part of welfare reform during Clinton's administration. I realize Clinton's speech at the DNC was pretty convincing that this was just done to free up states that want to try out their own programs for getting people back to work. Fine - but it will take months for these experiments to be evaluated and the start of this executive order was naturally timed for those welfare recipients to be coming off of the welfare rolls starting now and continuing through to the election. Today's jobs report of lower unemployment and more people leaving the workforce than finding a job is a trend we can expect to continue in next month's report and in the one that comes out on Nov 2nd, the Friday before the election. By then, Obama should be basking in an unemployment rate in the mid 7's.
Right wing lunacy? Depends on who you ask - according to the most media sources, it's at least a lie and even racist if you ask the DNC chair. I think manipulation of the unemployment rate with welfare fraud is has been in the works for a while and is real and is being embraced by the Democratic Party to get Obama reelected. I don't know how deep their motives go, but I really don't want to see the "better place" Obama promises to lead America forward to.
Just a couple more numbers to consider:
- Based on the 96,000 jobs created this month, the unemployment rate today would be 8.4% if so many people hadn't "given up" their job search.
- Only 69.9% of men are now in the workforce - the lowest rate since the number began being tracked in 1948.
- The overall workforce participation rate is the lowest since 1981.
- If the workforce participation rate had remained the same as it was when Obama took office, he'd have an unemployment rate of 11.4% today.
While the jobs report might be a logical measure of a president's performance when it comes time to cast a ballot, do you really think somebody is going to the polls saying "you know, if unemployment was only 7% I might vote for him"? Let's face it, when "undecided" voters go to the polls, they are probably thinking about how much gas costs, some perceived threat from bad guys (tewwowists, Kim Jung Il, Saddam Hussein, etc), how much bank of america charges them to use their ATM card, or some other idiotic thing.
ReplyDeleteIf the narrative breaks through that the economy is improving (even if it's at a glacial pace), then I think the Obama team has accomplished what they've set out to do. They certainly don't have anything tangible to point to. Talk about how easily Obama would be reelected if he had done even a marginal job of mending this economy and bringing this country together. Instead, he did an abysmal job and we're waffling.
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