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Jobs: Normally, a drop in the unemployment rate would be a welcome sign of an economy on the mend. But in the upside-down world of Obamanomics, the jobless figure is increasingly useless, hiding more than it reveals.
In April, the unemployment rate officially declined to 8.1% from the previous month's 8.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But you don't have to look very hard to see that the jobs picture actually deteriorated last month.
In fact, the only reason the jobless rate didn't climb in April is because so many people have simply quit looking for jobs and didn't get counted as unemployed.
Last month, 342,000 people disappeared from the labor force. Had that not happened, the unemployment rate would have been 8.3%, not 8.1%.
Worse, the labor force participation rate has been on a downward slide throughout Obama's presidency, as millions of workers have given up their fruitless job searches (see chart). That also masks the size of the unemployment problem.
Had the participation rate stayed where it was in June 2009 — the month the recession officially ended — the unemployment rate would be more like 11% today.
And when you add in all those who can't get full-time work because of the lousy job market, the jobless rate reaches Depression-era levels of 14.5% — unchanged, by the way, from the month before.
Nor does the unemployment number adequately capture the many other ways the job market has deteriorated on Obama's watch.
There are, for example, 5.1 million people who've been out of work for 27 weeks or more — nearly double the number when Obama took office.
The median length of unemployment is now 19.4 weeks — also nearly double from what it was in January 2009.
Even using the misleading unemployment number, there are half a million more people who can't find jobs today than there were when Obama got his keys to the White House.
And the economy isn't producing nearly enough new jobs to make a meaningful dent in any of this.
The 115,000 jobs created in April won't even cover population growth, much less bring back any of the 7.7 million who've dropped out of the labor force over the past three years.
Obama has, in other words, managed to give a whole new meaning to the term "jobless recovery," one that the traditional unemployment measure simply isn't able to capture.
And until someone comes up with a better measure, the public would do well to ignore whatever the unemployment rate appears to be telling them.
WASHINGTON — It's being called the "battle of the beards" — Paul Krugman vs. Ben Bernanke. Both are eminent (and bearded) economists: Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner and a prominent New York Times columnist. Krugman accuses Bernanke of ...
National Security: Moscow threatens to strike our missile defense sites in Europe if we proceed, as missile defense advocates warn that the administration is defunding existing missiles in favor of future, theoretical versions.'A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the ...
Nonsense: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says climate change is a national security issue. Isn't he the fellow who jets across the country to go home on weekends? If he's right, then he's undermining his own mission.Speaking Wednesday to the Environmental Defense Fund, Panetta claimed: "The area of ...
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Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Can anyone figure out how we're supposed to stay the course and bring home the troops at the same time? I'm at a loss, even after President Obama's surprise trip to the war zone. The president's televised address from ...
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