Where are the Jobs?

On the talking heads shows it always annoying that the Democrat political authority will defend fellow Democrats no matter what the evidence is. The latest annoyance was a Democratic operator telling the audience misinformation about jobs Obama has created. The political propagandist always qualifies his or her defense of the Obama job record with the disclaimer that the public cannot count when Obama first became president in January 2009, because that was Bush’s record, and must look at when the Obama recovery started, assumed to be when positive GDP growth occur in July 2009.

Civilian Employment - Population Ratio at a 26-year low, and Obama hacks are bragging about job creation.

Okay fair enough let’s look at the employment data from when the economy “turned around” in July 2009.

From July 2009 to May 2011 private employment has increased from 107,649 (thousands) to 108,916 or an increase of 1.2%. That translates into an annual job growth rate of 8/10ths of one percent a year, all at the cost of increasing the national debt 26% to $14.4 trillion, more important $9.17 trillion in public debt.

The civilian non-institutional population in that time has increased 1.5%. A 1.2% increase in employment and a 1.5% increase in population is not a good trend. In fact it is a horrible trend.

Manufacturing employment has increased 0.2% from July of 2009 to May of 2011. Non-farm jobs have increased 1.5% keeping pace with the population growth.

Civilian Participation Rate at a 26-year low under the Obama Administration

Civilian employment has dropped from July of 2009 to May 2011 from 139,794 (thousands) to 139,779 a decline of 0.01%.

Going through the numbers there is entirely nothing for the Obama Administration to be proud of in creating jobs. At best the billions spent have kept pace with population growth. At worse we are losing ground and millions who want to work cannot find a job.

Leaving aside how the Bureau of Labor Statistics manipulated the politically charged numbers there are a few key numbers that have not been diluted. The first one that is explicitly very telling is the civilian employment-population ratio. This number has declined from 60.6% in January 2009 to 59.3% in July 2009 to 58.4% in May 2011. A drop of 1.5% from July 2009 when the “recovery” began to today.

Is it any wonder people are pessimistic?

Fox News anchor Juan Williams and other Democrats have trouble understanding numbers and concepts like population growth

Another telling statistic is the civilian participation rate. It has gone from 65.7% in January 2009 to 65.5% in July 2009 to today the lowest it has been in 26 years, 64.2%.

So to answer the Democrats and just plain liars on the left, yes there has been a minute amount of job “creation” for our trillions of dollars of deficit spending, which will come back to haunt us, but when the data is look at taken as a whole to include population growth Obama’s economic policies have been a dismal failure, and we have not even seen the consequences of his defect spending yet but we will soon.

If we are ever to have a sane conversation with the Democrats that infest our society with 16th century economic remedies they will have to come to grips with researching and using fact to discus complex subjects like economic policy. Juan Williams will have to look at numbers WITH UNDERSTANDING and not spout off talking points. That will be the day.

This post also appeared in the Florida Political Press on 6-4-2011.