The much ballyhooed April jobs number is out, and it once again shows how well the Obama economic recovery is going.
It’s been almost 7 years. Shouldn’t we have recovered by now? Heck, in Reagan’s seventh year, we were running like a well-oiled machine, but I digress.
Yesterday, Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge had an interesting perspective on the One’s recovery progress. He wrote that underlying April’s great jobs number of 223,000 is a disturbing trend. Of that number, only 1000 manufacturing jobs were added.
He wrote: “Putting this in perspective, for every manufacturing job added in April there were 26 new waiters and bartenders confirming the robustness of America’s jobs recovery.”
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Durden goes on to explain that “since the start of the second great recession in December 2007, there have been 1.4 million manufacturing jobs lost. They have been almost completely offset by the 1.3 million waiter and bartender jobs gained. In short: serving food is the new making stuff.”
He also attached a chart showing which industries gained and which lost. Interestingly, while government added 10,000 jobs in April, the biggest losers were manufacturing, which gained only the aforementioned 1000 jobs and wholesale trade (business-to-business) which lost 4000 jobs. But, by far, the biggest loser was mining and logging, which lost 11,000 jobs in March and another 12,000 in April. Gee – I wonder what type of mining might be losing so many jobs. Could it be the coal mining industry, perhaps?
But this monthly jobs number doesn’t tell the whole Obama economy story. That’s just a “micro” look at his great work. Let’s take a look at the “macro” – the overall picture.
There are now 93,194 people hopelessly unemployed in our nation. That’s a record, folks! Darn near 30% of our entire population. It’s quite an achievement – one that would be difficult to achieve without making a concerted effort. It’s that or the rankest incompetence, but I’ll let you decide.
In one month, from March to April, 19,000 more Americans became unemployed, dropping out of the work force. That naturally brings us to the real gauge of employment—the dreaded Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR).
Being that I’ve written about this several times, regular readers know what the LFPR is. Click here to get caught up.
In brief, the labor force, according to BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics), is that part of the civilian noninstitutional population that either has a job or has actively sought one in the last four weeks. In other words, the LFPR is a percentage of working age people (16 years and up) who either have a job or are actually looking for employment.
Between 2004 and 2008, the LFPR held steady at about 66%. That’s a pretty strong number. Since Obama took office, it has been falling precipitously, from 65.7% in 2009 to 62.45% now. It’s the lowest it has been since 1977—38 years ago—and it shows no signs of stopping its freefall.
Despite all the positive rhetoric and stock market records, we are rapidly approaching Depression-era numbers, and, at this point, it won’t take much to push us over the edge.
It’s almost as if someone is purposely trying to ruin our economy – trying to create revolution. But why?
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” –Barack Obama.
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.” –Karl Marx.
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