The monthly jobs report was published July 8. The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.7% to 4.9%. So, the media and the President’s spokesmen celebrated an above average increase in jobs after two months of far below average results. But as usual they did not acknowledge the deception in that unemployment rate due to the consistent, unprecedented decline in workforce participation, as millions of jobless men and women are reclassified from “unemployed” to “not in the labor force” because they’ve become discouraged and don’t actively look for employment every week.
The Obama Administration began with a roar in January 2009. The nation was in the depths of a severe recession and the President’s top advisor, Ram Emmanuel famously issued a call for action
For over seven years we’ve endured the results of the this President’s audacious experiment, testing the Progressive theory that the federal government can generate prosperity by spending mountains of borrowed money on priorities of the governing elite.
The results are in. The chart below tracks the unprecedented increase in government debt and the resulting decline in the labor force participation rate.
Obama Misery Graph
The gradual decline in the unemployment rate since it peaked at 10% in 2009 coincides with a an unprecedented decline in the labor force participation rate as shown in the chart.
- The Labor Force is the sum of all persons who have jobs plus all who are officially classified as “unemployed.”
- The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the total civilian, working age population that is counted as in the labor force.
- The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labor force that is jobless and actively seeking employment. It’s computed by dividing the number of unemployed by the the total labor force.
Since the unemployment rate began to fall from it’s peak in October 2009 over six million jobless people have been reclassified from “unemployed” to “out of the labor force.” Excluding people from the labor force this way artificially lowers the unemployment rate. If they were still counted as in the labor force and unemployed, the June Unemployment rate would have been 8.2%
If the labor force participation rate were the same now as it was at the beginning of the recession in 2008 the June Unemployment Rate would have been 9.8%
What has the Obama Administration purchased with this unprecedented increase in debt which will burden us for generations? Nobody seems to be able to tell us.
In every speech Mrs. Clinton calls for spending even more borrowed money on the same old list of priorities including infrastructure, (remember Obama’s promise that his huge increase in spending would fund “shovel ready” projects?) inefficient alternative energy schemes that can never replace fossil fuels, and expanded education bureaucracies.
