An Ebbing Tide Lifts Obama’s Boat

Giving up is the key to Obama’s reelection. Giving up on looking for a job, that is...

4 million Americans are so disgusted with Obamanomics that they have permanently abandoned the nation’s tattered workforce since the president took office, helping to keep the unemployment rate out of scary double-digit territory where it more properly belongs.

The simple calculation for unemployment before all the seasonal adjustments and so forth, is:

Unemployment Rate = Number of Unemployed / Total Labor Force

So the easy way to get unemployment down is to reduce the numerator in proportion to the denominator, and the easiest way to do that is to declare that the greatest number of unemployed workers are no longer looking for work, and therefore no longer “unemployed.” This shrinks the numerator relative to the denominator, making unemployment go down.

Obama is on track to be the only president to lose jobs during his term

This impressive feat beats even Herbert Hoover. He produced this horrible historic milestone by stopping drilling, shutting down pipelines and plane factories, and liberally slinging shovel-ready bureaucratic manure all over the place.  His economic record is abysmal.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to talk about just how catastrophic Obama’s job destruction record is. Here’s the wrong way:

Looking at the U-6 unemployment rate, which includes the discouraged and part-time workers, really doesn't tell us anything, because the ratio stays pretty much the same in good times and bad, so it’s a comparative wash to point out that “real” unemployment is closer to 16%. 

The same goes for trying to point to statistical tricks like seasonal adjustments, which explain how the economy could shed 1.5 million jobs between December and January yet still claim that unemployment fell from 8.5 to 8.3 and added 234,000 jobs. All administrations have played by these rules, so it’s not really a good point of criticism.

Here’s why Obama is a horrible president...

The absolute number of total jobs in the US has shrunk since President Obama was inaugurated; a catastrophe considering our population continues to grow. The shrinking participation (taking frustrated job-seekers out of the equation) is the key to masking Obama’s jobs destruction. Just this past month Obama's regime sliced off 88,000 job-seekers, sending them to statistical oblivion and improving his bottom line.

If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7 percent then vs. 63.7 percent today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.0 percent.

As an analysis from Hamilton Place Strategies concludes, “Most of the shift of the past year is due not to the improvement in the labor market, but the continued drop in participation in the labor force.” (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)

Here’s the bad news for Obama:

If the participation rate does level off at its current rate, according to HPS, the economy would need to generate 231,000 jobs per month to get below 8 percent unemployment by Election Day (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)

Now for the good news for the hopium smokers:

If the participation rate continues its downward slide, however, that number would be much lower—perhaps as low as 131,000 jobs a month (8.3 Unemployment Rate is a Phony Number)

So as long as the overall number of jobs continue to shrink and the government continues to kick more and more workers out of the statistical labor force, the jobs picture will continue to look up for Obama, even as the economy sags and the number of Americans out of work increases.

And they say the GOP field is unelectable?

See also:  O-Man the Destroyer