How do you know the jobs report is a bad one? Well, when CNBC titles their article “US Jobs Creation Plunges, but Rate Drops to 7.6%” while the ticker above it reads “Stocks Tumble 1% after Dismal Jobs Report, Dow Skids 150,” you know it can’t be great. Sure, the unemployment rate fell .1% all the way down to 7.6%, but the US economy only created 88,000 jobs. The dropping unemployment rate is simply an effect of the shrinking size of the labor force.
Taking a closer look at the numbers, it becomes much clearer what went on in March:
[T]he drop in the jobless rate was little more than a statistical anomaly, with the labor-force participation rate tumbling to a 34-year low of 63.3 percent. However, a broader measure of unemployment that counts the discouraged and underemployed also fell, declining to 13.8 percent from February’s 14.3 percent.
The actual level of employment dropped by 206,000 and the number of Americans considered still in the labor force tumbled by 496,000.
The 63.3% civilian workforce participation rate is the lowest since the fall of 1978 …whenamateur economist Jimmy Carter was in office.I was speaking with an Obama supporter that was trying to defend the economy and I said something along the lines of, “Look, if a great coach took over the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs (that went 2-14 last season), that coach could not be blamed for the team being horrible. However, that coach is also responsible for a lack of improvement. So to relate this back to politics, Obama is not necessarily to blame for where we are, but it’s becoming much more obvious that he is responsible for not getting us out of this.”To say that this is all we’ve got and we have to accept our lackluster economy with a shrinking workforce is silly. A payroll tax hike on the middle class did not help. Period. It’s time for America – all of America – to realize that Obama’s policies are not helping. If they were helping, wouldn’t we be seeing more job creation than workforce exodus?
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