Americans for Limited Government chairman Howard Rich wrote an excellent column earlier this week that addressed America’s lingering – and looming – employment problem.
Rich’s piece focused on a frightening surge in long-term joblessness, as well as the precipitous decline in the size of the nation’s labor force, concluding that “most Americans aren’t experiencing the economic ‘healing’ that the White House claims is occurring all around them.”
He’s right … this continues to be a “Recovery in Name Only,” with a host of very real economic threats lurking from within and without.
Anyway, one of the stats that Rich used in his column was given visual expression in this chart (based on U.S. Labor Department data) published by the Heritage Foundation …
Chart: Heritage Foundation
There are other charts including in the Heritage Foundation analysis, like this one which shows the lagging job creation associated with this recovery …
Chart: Heritage Foundation
Obviously any job growth is welcome news … but as Barack Obama continues to pat himself on the back for modest economic gains (and as the mainstream media continues to praise him effusively for his “leadership”) it’s important to remember two things, as Dave Matthews would say.
First, America’s economy is recovering very, very slowly … which we blame on the Keynesian response to the economic downturn (which has perpetuated dependency as opposed to real recovery).
Second, if Obama’s tax hikes (those associated with Obamacare and those proposed in his new budget) are adopted, that economic sluggishness will continue.
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By vicupstate February 16, 2012 at 4:52 pm
This was not a run of the mill cyclical recession, it was a busted bubble induced by a lack of oversight of the financial (and by extention, housing)markets.
BTW, the baby boomers (born 1946 – 1964) are starting to retire now, so some decrease in the employment level is caused by that. That will continue for some time, regardless of the state of the economy.
By BigT February 16, 2012 at 5:06 pm
FITS just Slapped his liberal Buddies upside the head so hard, their teeth are rattling….
And the problem is: this site (and its GOP Hate) is Obama’s best friend…
If your own people are calling you out….OUCH….Nov. ain’t looking too good for the leftwing mesiah….
By guero February 16, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Little bitty t-bagger, please clean yourself up after having romnied on yourelf…
By SCBlues February 16, 2012 at 5:15 pm
FITS has a man-crush on Howard Rich.
By Skidmarks February 16, 2012 at 7:14 pm
The “Obama’s failed economic policies” line has been shitcanned. Now it’s the lame complaint the the recovery is too slow.
By Jan February 16, 2012 at 7:24 pm
As I have said before, I don’t see how Republicans can win, with the argument, Obama has not fixed the problem we caused fast enough.
By guero February 16, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Your chin, Billy, your chin. Wipe it after servicing Howie…
By Crooner February 17, 2012 at 11:09 am
The trend is our friend.
By Mr. Dixie February 17, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Maybe Howie should put up a graph of the stock market. If Obama’s policies are so bad … how do you explain the stock market doing so well. Have you people been looking at your 401K lately?
By Joe February 17, 2012 at 10:02 pm
We need a graph showing gas prices. $1.80 when the FSPOTUS took over…nearly $4.00 now. Jimma Carta 2.0.
By SCBlues February 17, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Here you go Joe:
Below from the US Energy Information Administration – eia.gov
Average Annual Gas Prices All Grades
2000 $1.52 (Bush)
2001 $1.46 (Bush)
2002 $1.39 (Bush)
2003 $1.60 (Bush)
2004 $1.90 (Bush)
2005 $2.31 (Bush)
2006 $2.62 (Bush)
2007 $2.84 (Bush)
2008 $3.30 (Bush) Note: More than doubled under Bush
2009 $2.40 (Obama)
2010 $2.84 (Obama)
2011 $3.58 (Obama)
2nd week of February 2012 $3.58
Gas prices doubled under Bush.
Bush’s last year in office – average gas price $3.30/gallon
Today under Obama average gas price is $3.58/gallon
Don’t take my word for it – go to the US Energy Information Administration website at eia.gov and research it yourself.
Good night, Joe.
By Common Sense February 18, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Joe will now disappear as facts..those pesky facts..keep creeping up..
By kballer February 18, 2012 at 12:37 am
Nice comment SCBlues. Hopefully wages can catch up with cost of living increases.
By SCBlues February 18, 2012 at 10:21 am
kballer -
You can rest assured that they will not catch up with a RepubliCON controlled House and a Senate that requires 60 votes to get anything done due to the filibusters by the obstructionist RepubliCONS.
And by the time the RepubliCONS have rammed throuogh all of their union busting legislation nationwide looks like no workers will have any decent wages or benefits or pensions.
Keep voting RepubliCON kballer – must be nice to be in that top 1% that the RepubliCONS cater to.
By GASMAN February 18, 2012 at 8:48 am
Here you go SCBLUES…..The Day Bush vacated the White House gas was 1.75 per gallon….the same day Barry took over. Don’t take my word for it – go to the US Energy Information Administration website….wait you already know about that website. Good morning SCB
By GASMAN February 18, 2012 at 8:51 am
So the way I look at it gas prices increases about 25 cents per gallon in eight years under Bush; thus far they have increased 1.83 per gallon under Barry
By SCBlues February 18, 2012 at 10:43 am
Come on now, GASMAN -
Why don’t we track it by the hour and see what the prices are?
Are we going to include all of those months in the Summer of ’08 when Bush had us paying historic pricing of over $4.00/gallon?
Bush’s Big Oil Buddies raked in over $100 Billion in profits for 2008.
What are you afraid of by tracking it annually to get a fair snapshoot of the situation? Oh that’s right – if we track it annually it might make Bush look bad, huh?
You might also want to take a look at consumerenergyreport.com – they repoort that domestic oil production decreased in every year that Bush was in office and has increased in every year of the first three years under President Obama.
Bush spent too much time been kissing up to the Saudi’s – and I mean literally kissing – Google “Bush Kissing Saudi Prince” – Obama has been busy taking care of Bin Laden – something Bush & Company was too incompetent to handle.
By GASMAN February 22, 2012 at 6:00 pm
SCBLUES
No need to track it hourly…just looked at gas price on the day Bush became POTUS and day Obama became POTUS(very important dates) not random not hourly. The facts are that gas prices will probably be at least doubled if not more when Obama leaves office January 2013. Again in eight years gas prices increased 25 cents under Bush. Obama will have a hard time beating any of the four GOPers if gas is greater than 4 bucks a gallon in early November. I need hope and change for 2012…Ron Paul 2012
By kballer February 18, 2012 at 8:12 pm
SCBlues- I agree with you. The repubs have been union busting and attacking workers wages all over the country. The florida repubs are currently trying to lower wages for tipped employees from 4.65 to 2.13 per hr. Darden (owners of red lobster and olive garden)recently lowered wages for bartenders and bussers to boost share value and now force servers to pay 3% of their sales to try and compensate. We are forming our own union of restaurant workers to fight back against these corporate owned republican parasites. I voted for Obama and im proud of it.
By SCBlues February 19, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Sorry kballer – I misinterpreted your earlier post.
This is good info about what is going on in Florida – I wa sno aware of that. I know the Governor is Florida is Repulbican but is the State House and State Senate controlled by the Repubs too?
Was that lowering of wages by Darden nationwide at all fo the Red Lobsters and Olive Gardens?
Thanks for the good info!
By wawa February 19, 2012 at 6:32 pm
These graphs are absurd! Did anyone look at anything other than the red lines? Get out an umbrella because it’s about to rain cold hard facts up in here:
The first graph (while admittedly less misleading than the second) is labor participation. Meaning the percentage of Americans with or looking for jobs compared to the total number of Americans. Most people in America under 17-18 and over 65 won’t be included. It seems as though there was some “atomic” bump in the birth rate just around 65 years before 2010. A drop in labor participation between ’07 and ’12 could have been predicted in 1960. This was actually a topic we discussed in my economics classes years before the recession began.
The second graph fails in a few respects:
1 – It puts a seemingly random time constraint on the years from which data was collected. Probably because from 1939 -1960 (21 years) there were 4 recessions that had non-farm job troths greater than -500,000 (see: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=19390101&d2=19600131 ), since 1960 (50 years, or 2.5 times as much annual data) there have been 2 such recessions (1 in 73 and our most recent one). Of those 2 recessions our latest one was 33.3% times greater (according to the data that is the focus of the graph than the one in 73). http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=19600101&d2=20120131
2 – Our most recent recession was nearly twice as long as the 2nd worst recession in the data provided:1973-1977 http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=19730101&d2=19770131 compared to 2007-2011 http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=20070101&d2=20110131
3 – It’s entire purpose seems to be to to implicate the current president and/or the recovery package. The argument against the recovery package fails in many ways because there is no control set of data so the question becomes what would have happened if there weren’t a recovery package with this particular set of circumstances. In terms of this particular package (the one Romney supported when it came down to brass tax) only 12% of economists believe the cost of the recovery outweighed the benefits. http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4Xi
Also here is the Jan 2001-Jan 2009 non-farm payroll data http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=20010101&d2=20090131 compared to Jan 2009-Jan 2012 data http://www.tradingeconomics.com/chart.png?s=nfp%20tch&d1=20090101&d2=20120131