O’s Unemployment is a Disaster

RUSH: Some people think that the unemployment rate today going up to 9.2% pretty much means that there’s no way a responsible Republican leader would cave, with the unemployment news continuing to be bad, therefore Obama’s policy obviously being destructive, there is no way, Rush, don’t worry about it, Rush, there’s no way a responsible leader’s gonna cave, that 9.2% unemployment figure’s a game-changer. What do you mean? It just went up one-tenth of a point. Why wasn’t 9.1% a game-changer? What, on Thursday they’re talking about possibly caving so go from 9.1 to 9.2, well, that takes the cave off the table. A lot of wishful thinking going out there.

This is the Wall Street Journal: “The unemployment rate increased to 9.2% in June, the Labor Department reported, but if the recession hadn’t pushed so many people out of the labor market it would have been much worse. The duration of unemployment continues to increase and sat at an average of 39.9 weeks in June. More than four million people who want jobs, or nearly a third of the unemployed, have been out of work for more than a year. Those are the people are hanging in and looking for work, but a large number have given up altogether. The share of the population in the jobs market, called the labor-force participation rate, fell to 64.1% last month — the lowest level since 1984 when women were still just beginning to enter in full force.”

So the bottom line is the calculation’s been done here. Without the people who have dropped out, if you still counted the people who no longer look for work, the U3 unemployment number, which is the one that’s reported every week, would be over 11%. And the U6 number would be up over 17%. The AP today, reporting the 9.2% rate, headlines it this way: “Unemployment Rose to 9.2% as Hiring Stalls — Hiring slowed to a near standstill last month. Employers added the fewest jobs in nine months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2%.” You notice how they put that, “hiring slowed.” Unemployment has gone up. It would seem that hiring has done more than slowed. But at least you have to give AP credit for trying to put the best face they can on this latest bad news, and it’s bad news, and everybody, Reuters, AP, Politico, they are all trying to spin this with the biggest smiley face they can find.

The Labor Department says the economy generated only 18,000 net jobs in June. Pelosi — we’ve got it on tape — said that 400,000 jobs would be created immediately after Obamacare was passed. Biden said we’d be creating, what, 500,000 jobs a month because of the stimulus. Yeah, 500,000 jobs each month, and yet only 18,000 jobs were added in this, our second Summer of Recovery. And they finally report this, folks, in the story. Last month’s job number was revised down by almost half. So May’s unemployment was probably 9.2% as well. Only 18,000 jobs were added in June, and that’s gonna be revised down next month. All these numbers changed; they just never tell us the next month how they were wrong.

Now, notice how yesterday the AP and the rest of the media latched onto the ADP claim, the payroll agency, that 157,000 jobs have been added in the private sector. They did the same thing last month, too, but once again the news media and the rest of the Democrat Party find out it’s easier to talk us into a recession than to talk us out of one. They’re doing their best to talk us out of this, but they just can’t. They admit in this story that the revised numbers, the supposed jobs created last month, no, it was 3,000 less than we thought, had been revised down. My point is this 18,000 jobs they say were created in June, it’s gonna be 12 to 13 by the time this is revised in a couple weeks. You just won’t see it reported.

Bureau of Labor Statistics — this is what I was referring to in the first hour, the new normal. They had to change the reporting of unemployment to keep the rate at 9.2%. “Effective with data for January 2011, the Current Population Survey (CPS) was modified to allow respondents to report longer durations of unemployment. Prior to that time, the CPS accepted unemployment durations of up to 2 years; any response of unemployment duration greater than this was entered as 2 years. Starting with data for January 2011, respondents were able to report unemployment durations of up to 5 years. This change affected estimates of average (mean) duration of unemployment. The change did not affect the estimate of the number of unemployed persons and did not affect other data series on the duration of unemployment. There was an unprecedented rise in the number of persons with very long durations of unemployment during the recent labor market downturn.”

So they’ve had to revise it up to five years. That’s because, as I mentioned earlier, it used to be back as recently as 2007, you’re out of work five months and then you got a job. Now people are out of work two years, revised up to five. This is what it means.

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RUSH: David Plouffe, top Obama advisor, 2008, did you hear this, said that unemployment is not gonna be an issue for 2012. People aren’t gonna vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate. This is what he said: (paraphrasing) “The average American doesn’t view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly job numbers. People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate. They’re gonna vote based on how do I feel about my own situation, do I think my president makes decisions based on me and my family?” That’s what he says. So basically he’s saying you people are a bunch of selfish twits. As long as your personal situation is okay, you don’t care if the country’s going to hell, you’ll vote for the guy taking it there.

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RUSH: Now, this jobs business, folks, it’s even worse than reported. In the Reuters story today, look at me. Look at me. In the Reuters story today, buried in this article on the job numbers is this: “Contributing to the weak tenor of the report,” meaning today, “the Labor Department said the economy created 44000 fewer jobs in April and May than previously thought.” Now, that is one heck of a downward revision, 44,000 fewer jobs created in April and May than previously thought. What were the numbers in April and May? How many jobs were created in April, what was it, the usual 23, 25,000? Folks, we’re in negative territory here.

Buried in this story: “Contributing to the weak tenor of the report,” practically whispering this. Psst! (whispering) “the Labor Department said the economy created 44,000 fewer jobs.” Don’t tell anybody. We have to report it. Limbaugh will catch it, but we gotta report it.

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RUSH: Morning Bell today, Heritage Foundation: “An Economy in Panic.” Two items of note here. The Morning Bell is the Heritage Foundation blog and it’s always great, and there’s this note — and it dovetails. As I was saying (I probably sounded like was complaining) yesterday: Why is it that when you learn two plus 2 + 2 = 4 you remember it, but when you learn that tax cuts create jobs, you forget it? “If you want a comparison of what job growth could look like, go back to the 1980s’ Reagan recovery. By the 20-month mark, the unemployment rate had dropped from 10.8 percent to 7.5 percent — a 3.3-point drop.

In contrast, under [Pharaoh] Obama, the unemployment rate has risen a full percentage point to today’s 9.2 percent” at his 20-month mark. Comparisons: “[T]he American people have President Obama’s big-spending economic policies to thank for slowing the pace of recovery. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains how the President’s debt-laden reliance on Keynesian interventions in the economy have helped put the U.S. economy in its current state: Investors and businesses make decisions on a forward-looking basis. They know that today’s large debt levels are simply tomorrow’s tax hikes, interest rate increases, or inflation — and they act accordingly,” which means they don’t act, pure and simple.

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