Economy Remains Anemic Despite 'Upward Trend'

Economy Remains Anemic Despite 'Upward Trend'
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Economy: The White House and the media tell us we should celebrate the 175,000 jobs created in February. Relative to the president's miserable record on job creation, we suppose this is progress of sorts. But not much.

Remember in January - even with an upward revision - employers added less than 100,000 jobs, so economists are hyping the "upward trend."

And it's certainly true that some jobs were lost due to the blizzards and record cold in the East and Great Lakes states.

But let's get serious. The U.S. economy should be spinning off about 300,000 to 400,000 jobs a month, and we are at half that level.

The labor force participation rate (now at 63%) remains stuck at or near its lowest point since the late 1970s, when disco music was the rage.

Amazingly, there are more than 2 million fewer Americans in the labor force today than one year ago. A shrinking labor force is rarely, if ever, a sign of economic health.

Remember, this is the fifth year of a recovery, and yet we've had no big acceleration of hiring since the recession ended in June 2009.

Average wages were up in February, which is a positive sign, and job creation was solid in manufacturing and business services.

But troubling signs still abound: Weekly hours worked dipped by 0.2 hours in February. The number of long-term unemployed (six months or more) rose by 203,000.

The real unemployment rate - counting those who have stopped looking for work and those who are underemployed - is still in double digits.

Since this recovery began, job growth has trudged forward at half the normal recovery pace.

One amazing statistic: While Barack Obama has been president, the number of working Americans has increased by just under 5 million, while the number of food stamp recipients is up by almost 15 million.

For every new job created, three Americans have gone on the dole. That's some recovery.

Obama's response to this anemia in hiring is to call for a rise in the minimum wage - which will kill more jobs - and more "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects - on the grounds that borrowing $6 trillion just wasn't enough pump priming.

Of course, if all this government spending were the magic carpet ride Obama says it is, we would have unemployment below 5%.

We're about 3 million jobs short of that promise. Maybe Obama might want to try reading out of a new playbook.

That would mean suspending ObamaCare, cutting tax rates on businesses, and bringing down government spending and debt to free up private sector resources.

A Fox News poll finds that half of Americans still think we are in a recession - and for way too many families, we are.

 

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