Editor's notes: according to this Review's observations over the past four years, a hiring total of 153,000 moves the unemployment rate down 1/10th of a percent. That did not happen last month in spite of mid-March estimates that the economy had added "half a million" jobs. In fact, the economy slowed down in drastic measure, falling from a GNP 4Q of 3% to 2% for the 1Q of 2011 - a 33% drop in terms of goods and service produced and sold.
The nation's Gross National Product averaged less than 2% for each of the last three years (2009, 2010, 2011), a very disturbing record, especially in view of Obama's several claims that "we have broken the back of the recession" and his touting of "recovery summer" back in 2010.
We have four full months to the end of August and the Republican National Convention. September and October give us the final 60 days of the election cycle. Both parties will have had their conventions by the end of August and the "race" is on in full campaign mode. The point? Obama is running out of time.
Update: we must add the fact that 164,000 people left the workforce in March and are no longer being counted. That has more to do with the declining unemployment rate than any other single influence. Also, as an update, you should know that if we counted the workforce population in the same manner as 2009, the unemployment rate would actually be 10.9%. What is not mentioned in the current reporting cycle is the fact that 7.5 million people have left the official workforce and are no longer counted in employment/unemployment statistics.
Update: our friends at Hedge Zero have this to say about our actual needs in this business of jobs-creation:
US Needs To Generate 262K Jobs Each Month To Get Back To Breakeven
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/06/2012 - 10:11BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics fixed Great Depression Unemployment |
| Click on image to enlarge |
This is the latest tally: since the start of the Second Great Depression, the US has lost a total of 5.2 million nonfarm payroll jobs, beginning with 138 million jobs in December 2007, and printing at 132.8 million as of 90 minutes ago. So far so good. The problem, however is that the denominator in the equation is not fixed, and as everyone knows the US labor force, despite the ridiculous BLS data fudging, is growing in line with population, albeit at a slower pace. According to all non-partisan budget forecasters, each month the labor force should be adding 90,000 people. Which in turn means that since December 2007, the labor force has really grown by 4.6 million. Adding these two together leads to a 10 million job deficit. So what has to happen for these 10 million to get promptly put back into jobs, and for America to get back to the ~5% unemployment rate it boasted just as the credit bubble peaked? Nothing too crazy: the country just has to create 262,000 jobs every month for the remainder of Obama's first, and now, by the looks of it, second term too. We are quite confident he can handle it.
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