Rare News Desk
Every now and again, in between executing on important work of his administration, like putting the health care system under the knout of lifer bureaucrats and shoveling money out to his green crony capitalists, President Obama publicly “pivots” to jobs.
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Maybe right now would be a good time to show us your pirouette, Mr President? Perhaps a grand jeté or two?
Even the morning chaps at MSNBC think that last Friday’s December jobs report was a dud.
Actual jobs were up a bit, but the “civilian labor force” was down by 347,000, meaning 347,000 people gave up looking for work.
One blizzard doesn’t make a winter, though, so let’s look at the employment numbers since President Obama was inaugurated five years ago.
Here is a chart of data taken from US Bureau of Labor Statistics data:
Note that the numbers are “percent participation” of the “civilian noninstitutional population” in the labor force and in employment.
Let’s face it: this is a nightmare. Not only has the president failed to get jobs back to where they were when he took office, but month after month, good honest Americans have given up on work, discouraged and dispirited by the jobless recovery. That’s why the labor force keeps going down.
What is going on? Who are these people giving up on work? Are they young people, old people? Let’s take a look from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data tool (Java needed) and break the labor force up into young, middle-aged, and older. And let’s look back 20 years.
These numbers aren’t seasonally adjusted, so the sawtooth pattern shows the young pushing into the labor force every summer.
Now we have a better picture of the labor market in recent years. Adults in their peak earning years have reduced their labor force participation a little, from 83 to 81 percent.
But young people have been hammered. They were cruising along at about 65 percent in the 1990s with a huge peak every year during the summer. The Bush years pushed them down to 60 percent with a smaller summer peak. But the Obama years have forced young people down to a participation rate of about 53 percent with a miserable summer peak. No wonder that Obama’s popularity among young people is plummeting.
The real surprise is the old ‘uns like me. We’ve been steadily increasing our labor force participation through the 1990s and 2000s, except that we all petered out in the Obama economy. What is going on here? Are older people working more because they have to or because they want to?
If the president responds to this mess, and pivots once again to jobs, what should he do?
Maybe President Obama should counsel with the shade of Ronald Reagan.
The man that Democrats called an “amiable dunce” took office in 1981 in the middle of a nasty recession and proceeded to tighten monetary policy, cut domestic spending, and lower income tax rates.
Everyone predicted disaster until the economy started to grow like gangbusters in 1983. Real GDP growth was 4.63 percent in 1983, 7.26 percent in 1984 and 4.24 percent in 1985. The biggest growth number for President Obama thus far: 2.78 percent in 2012.
You’d think, based on his record thus far, that President Obama doesn’t care about jobs. But that can’t be true, can it?
Maybe it’s time to get back to basics, Mr. President. Let’s see your plié and first position. I worry that a pivot is too advanced for you and may cause permanent injury.
