The Most Important Unemployment Number May Be Yet To Come

 

 

Thanks to Congressman Frelinghuysen for providing the stats (& excellent links) below that were released by the DOL (unemployment rate for May is 8.2%) earlier today that show the pathetic economic condition of America three years & four months into BO's presidency.  The above theoretical projected graph was released by BO's economic team of Roemer & Bernstein (now both long gone to greener pastures) on January 10, 2009.

 

These stats, awful as they are, really disguise the miserable condition of our economy.  For instance, how encouraging is it for a long time unemployed person who finally finds a job that pays $22,000 per year if his former job paid $50,000 per year – such a person is now counted as employed.  (Ask a senior citizen about their CD interest income since rates have fallen from 5% to less than 2% – a 60% decline.  Same thing.  What if these manipulated artificially low CD interest rates delay your retirement or cause you to never retire all per BO's design?)

 

And yet poll after poll says it will be a close presidential election – ask yourself how can that be? – it is important for each of us to know the answer & regular readers of this blog do. 

 

Worse yet let the unemployment rate fall to 7.9% between now & November (one lousy tick below the maximum 8% shown in the graph above for the "with recovery plan" i.e., stimulus) for business cycle reasons & BO will release a barrage of ads saying his plan is working – just a little late because things were worse under Bush than could ever have been imagined.  Such a similar plan worked to get FDR reelected in the 1930s when the economy was even worse.

 

Unemployment: By the Numbers

• 40: The unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent for 40 consecutive months. Before President Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8 percent for this long since the Great Depression. Over three years ago, the Obama Administration said that unemployment would never reach 8 percent if the "stimulus" was approved.
• 14.8%: The rate of "underemployment" or "real unemployment," including the unemployed, those who want work but have stopped searching in this economy, and those who are forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is 14.8 percent.
• 12,720,000: There were 12.72 million unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of May, an increase of 220,000 from April. There have been more than 12 million unemployed Americans every month that President Obama has been in office.
• 8,098,000: The number of Americans forced to work only part-time in May because they could not find full-time employment was 8.1 million, an increase of 245,000 from April.
• 2,423,000: The number of people who have looked for a job at some point in the last year but are not counted as unemployed because they gave up their search is now 2.4 million, up by 60,000 from April.
• 830,000: The number of discouraged people who stopped looking for work because they believed there were no jobs available is now 830,000.
• 23,241,000: The total number of "underemployed" Americans is 23.2 million, including those unemployed (12.7 million), those who are no longer looking for work (2.4 million), and those who are working part-time because no other work is available (8.1 million).
• 13^th: Where the U.S. ranks in ease of starting a business in the world according to a World Bank report. In 2007, the U.S. ranked 3^rd.