Saturday, April 07, 2012

The New Math


President Obama claimed yesterday that his administration has created over 4 million private-sector jobs over the last two years and 600,000 in the last three months ... see: Detroit News Article.  I realize that it is not playing fair to actually check on The Barry, but I have a compulsion for facts.  So once again I visited my favorite site for employment statistics: (the A-1 series at BLS.gov) .  And what do I find?  A little over two years ago, in January of 2010, there were 139.064 million Americans employed ... and, as of the most recent report, there were 142.034 million Americans employed.  This is an increase of 2.97 million ... not "over 4 million."  as claimed.  In the last three months the increase has been 1.24 million ... much better than Obama is claiming ... strange! Three things might explain these differences: 1) Obama is using non-seasonally-adjusted data, 2) there have been dramatic swings in government employment levels, or 3) he is, once again, prevaricating.

Nevertheless,  the United States employment in January of 2010 as a percent of the noninstitutional population was 58.5%  And at the end of March, 2012 it was exactly the same, 58.5%, so our President's job creation performance can be best described as treading water. We are spending billions, no trillions of dollars to create jobs in order for the anointed one to keep his crown ... all for naught.

I may be old fashioned but I think we ought not have naught to show for all this profligate spending.

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