RUSH: On the jobs numbers, I was told by a number of people that the media did not make a big deal of the jobs numbers and their portrayal when the jobs report was released on Friday. Not true if you were international, like I was. The news internationally was that this country had recovered every job lost since Obama was elected. It turns out that all the jobs are back if you stop at pre-recession levels. In other words, we’re seven million jobs short of where we are for a total job recovery. And that’s why the Drive-Bys are not making a big deal out of this. But you can imagine how livid I was when I heard the international report on this. ‘Cause I knew it couldn’t be true, and yet there it was just front and center for international public consumption.

The National Journal headline: “Don’t Get Too Excited About the New Jobs Report — The economy hit a milestone on Friday after the latest jobs report shows that the US recovered all the jobs lost during the Great Recession. But people shouldn’t celebrate too much just yet.”

Well, why not? In my experience, this kind of news would be celebratory. Recovering all the jobs lost during a recession? That would be big news. Even if they were not top-drawer jobs, that would be big news. That would signal some kind of policy and some kind of economic activity that was worth citing. It would be positive. And yet here are the Drive-Bys saying, “Nah, no big deal.” The Drive-Bys, the State-Controlled Media saying, “Nah, no big deal. Don’t get excited about it.”

“On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the US economy added 217,000 jobs in May, with the unemployment rate unchanged at 6.3 percent. The economy needed to add 113,000 to pass the pre-recession peak number of jobs from January 2008. The United States lost 8.7 million jobs in the recession. But this overlooks the simple fact that there are more working-age people in the US now than there were six years ago. … So, while on its face it looks like the US regained all the jobs lost over the past six years, that perspective doesn’t take into account the number of new people in the labor force or address the labor market gap created by those new people.”

That’s not even the nub of it. There are close now to 93 million Americans not working. The labor force participation rate is as small as it has been since the 1970s. One of the things that nobody — you talk about new people enter the job market and there aren’t any jobs for them. The bottom line is that all of that is relevant since Obama was reelected. They can tout all these jobs created that got us back to pre-recession levels. That also happens to be pre-Obama, and that’s why the Drive-Bys don’t want to make a big deal about it.

All we’ve done is replenish the job market to where it was when Bush left office, but if you talk any more about it, then you have to get into how many more jobs have been lost since and with the recovery, engineered by Obama. It’s not a happy story. It’s not a good story. There’s nothing upbeat or positive about it. So the focus remains on the 6.3% unemployment rate, really, really good, and nothing to get excited about, a lot of people in the market.

USA Today: “Job Market Recovers Losses Yet Appears Weaker.” Even with the new peak of jobs, there’s a great deal of slack. There are 1.49 million construction jobs that are missing. The Urban Institute says we need to create seven million jobs to keep up with the population growth. That’s the point they’re making here, is that all of these high school graduates, college graduates in the last seven years entering the job market, there aren’t any jobs for them despite replenishing ourselves up to pre-recession levels.

There’s nothing good here is the bottom line, and that’s why the Drive-Bys are saying don’t get too excited about it, which is somewhat noteworthy in and of itself. Normally if they had a headline like this they’d be running with it like the European media did. But in this case there’s nothing positive anywhere. You know, the job market, there’s nothing positive anywhere. There’s nothing inspirational, nothing hopeful. Unless you happen to be already wealthy and are heavily invested in Wall Street, nothing’s changed. We’re still on the same lackadaisical malaise cycle. We’re still just flittering along. College graduates, more and more of ’em are living at home. One in five are in poverty. There’s nothing good and it’s all the result of policy.

It’s not the Bush economy. It’s not that we fought two wars that we didn’t have to fight. It’s none of these extraneous excuses offered by the Regime. We are in the economic circumstances, the immigration circumstances, whatever circumstances, we’re in them because of specific policies implemented by this administration.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Jim in Andover, Massachusetts. Hi, Jim. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, thank you for taking the call, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you today.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Yes. I was just wondering, my comment was to delve into the spin of the jobs numbers or the report that you had that we have regained all the jobs lost since the recession started?

RUSH: That’s right, yeah.

CALLER: Well, what is the definition of a recession? How is a recession defined? Basically we know that it’s two years (sic) of negative growth.

RUSH: No, no. Two quarters.

CALLER: Oh, I’m sorry. Two quarters! Yeah. I misspoke there. (chuckle) I’m a little nervous.

RUSH: Well, but that’s… No, no, no. A recession cannot include the first quarter of negative growth. That was because of global warming.

CALLER: Ah. Okay, well, after this last winter I don’t think we have that problem.

RUSH: No! They said that the first quarter negative growth was because of global warming, ’cause of the cold weather.

CALLER: Okay. Well, the two quarters of negative growth, let’s assume that both quarters had losses of two million jobs, now. That would mean that we’re already down four million jobs since the recession has even declared to have started. I was gonna say, that’s the best case scenario. Exactly like you said that if we have a quarter following the first quarter that we have a slight increase in growth —

RUSH: It’s just another way of saying this things are really bad, folks. That’s where he’s headed.