The Secret Of The Dishonest Unemployment Report Revealed – 4 Million Jobs DESTROYED Under Obama And Worst Labor Participation in 31 Years

I’ve written about the disastrous hollowing-out and destruction of the American economy by the Job-Destroyer-in-Chief before.  It’s good to see it being echoed by excellent conservative sites such as American Thinker and even BETTER to see it taken up by Reuters:

September 23, 2012
The ‘hidden’ unemployed
Rick Moran

Every month when the jobless numbers come out, Obama critics take pains to point out that the “official” number is very misleading.

One of the major reasons is that the published unemployment rate does not include such “hidden” workers as those working part time who would like to work full time, and those who have given up looking for work.

Reuters has a good piece today on the latter:

Economists, analyzing government data, estimate about 4 million fewer people are in the labor force than in December 2007, primarily due to a lack of jobs rather than the normal aging of America’s population. The size of the shift underscores the severity of the jobs crisis.

If all those so-called discouraged jobseekers had remained in the labor force, August’s jobless rate of 8.1 percent would have been 10.5 percent.

The jobs crisis spurred the Federal Reserve last week to launch a new bond-buying program and promise to keep it running until the labor market improves. It also poses a challenge to President Barack Obama’s re-election bid.

The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one has fallen by an unprecedented 2.5 percentage points since December 2007, slumping to a 31-year low of 63.5 percent.

“We never had a drop like that before in other recessions. The economy is worse off than people realize when people just look at the unemployment rate,” said Keith Hall, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

The participation rate would be expected to hold pretty much steady if the economy was growing at a normal pace. Only about a third of the drop in the participation rate is believed to be the result of the aging U.S. population.

The economy lost 8.7 million jobs in the 2007-09 recession and has so far recouped a little more than half of them.

Economists say jobs growth of around 125,000 per month is normally needed just to hold the jobless rate steady.

Given the likelihood that Americans will flood back into the labor market when the recovery gains traction, a pace twice that strong would be needed over a sustained period to make progress reducing the unemployment rate.

Last month, employers created just 96,000 jobs.

Some areas of the country are better off than others jobs-wise, but that last factoid from Reuters should give us pause. There have only been two months during the Obama administration that have seen more than 250,000 jobs created. If there ever is anything like a normal recovery, the real unemployment rate will skyrocket once the discouraged workers are counted again by the BLS.

No one knows the future but God.  That said, it is my belief that if Obama is reelected, you will see a widespread dive in joblessness as small businesses that have just been hanging on hoping the turd would be voted out variously come to the conclusion, “The hell with it.”

‘The Forgotten Man’ Demands Unfavorable Comparison Between Obama And FDR

From Wise and Frugal Government:

History Repeating Itself and Not in a Good Way

Do yourself a favor and get a copy of Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression. Barack Obama’s presidency and his economic policies are placed in context once you read Shlaes’ account of FDR and his policies. Written in 2007, there is no way Shlaes could have manipulated the similarities.

Consider this account of the Roosevelt Administration in 1937, four and a half years after the New Deal was introduced and the economy refused to budge. She refers to this time as “a depression within the Depression. “

“…the Economist would conclude…that the United States “seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, how to grow.”

Yet Washington was doing all the wrong things. Officials in the capital seemed arrogant, obsessed with numbers, and oblivious to the pain the nation was suffering. People were angry that Congress and the president had recently raised taxes. With business so hard, why make it harder?” (2)

Sound familiar? Shlaes continues with a story of the treasury secretary giving a speech before the Academy of Political Science during this time:

“There had been a national emergency in the past, the secretary told listeners. But now it no longer existed. The secretary then went on to conclude that the country must now “continue progress toward a balance of the federal budget.”

A member of the audience laughed out loud in shock. The remark seemed so much at odds with the painful reality of that November.

…Washington had already made thousands of efforts to help the economy, yet those efforts had not brought prosperity.” (3)

Policy is not where the similarities end. “Roosevelt offered rhetorical optimism, but pessimism underlay his policies. …Roosevelt cared little for constitutional niceties and believed they blocked progress. His remedies were on a greater scale and often inspired by socialist or fascist models abroad.” (6)

And finally: “The problem was their naivete about the economic value of Soviet-style or European-style collectivism–and the fact that they forced such collectivism upon their own country.” (7)

Arm yourself with historical fact. Read The Forgotten Man. For as Jefferson said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Sure sounds familiar to me.

I mean, “rhetorical optimism” sounds a lot like “hope and change.”

The basic premise of Amity Schlaes’ The Forgotten Man is one shared by economist Robert Higgs, namely, that the paralyzing uncertainty over the FDR administration’s strategy actively discouraged business from investing or hiring as they struggled to respond to the government’s numerous and simultaneous counterproductive policies.

This is something that has been going on since Obama took office.

Some recent articles I’ve written on this area (all having numerous supporting resources):

Obama’s Backdoor Taxation And The Coming Consequences Of Obamanomics

Obama Bank Restructure Attacks Market, Terrifies Investors, Hamstrings Economy

VIA CNBC: ‘Many Firms Reluctant To Hire Because Of [Democrats’] Taxes, Rules’

Obama Job Summit Deliberately Snubs Primary Job Creators

Liberals Say Recession Behind Us While Small Businesses Go Belly Up

Obama Continues Rampant Dishonesty With Stimulus ‘Jobs ‘

Why Is American Unemployment Under Obama Rising Faster Than In Other Countries?

Even Liberals Realizing Obama Has Been Total Bust At Creating Jobs

China Alarmed By Obama’s Deficits, Shocking Irresponsibility

Miniumum Wage Increase Means Maximum Employment Decrease

Tax Increases on ‘Rich’ People Planned by Democrats Would Hit Over A Million Small Businesses

An important article for consideration is this one:

Obama Administration Admits It Will Leave Unemployment Higher Than It Found It

because it jives so well with what history told us about the result of FDR’s policies as told by his very own treasury secretary:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

In April 1939, for the record – a full six years and change after FDR assumed office – unemployment was still at 20.7%