Nearly 1 Million Workers Vanished Under Obama Initial jobless claims unexpectedly jumped by 24,000 last week to 399,000 as more workers lost their jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday. At the same time, the economy continues to lose workers. In the 30 months since the recession officially ended, nearly 1 million people have dropped out of the labor force they aren't working, and they aren't looking according to data from Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the past two months, the labor force shrank by 170,000. This is virtually unprecedented in past economic recoveries, at least since the BLS has kept detailed records. In the past nine recoveries, the labor force had climbed an average 3.5 million by this point, according to an IBD analysis of the BLS data. "Given weak job prospects, many would-be workers dropped out of (or never entered) the labor force," noted Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute in her analysis of the BLS jobs report issued last Friday. "That reduces the measured unemployment rate but does not represent real improvement." According to the BLS, the "labor force participation rate" the ratio of the number of people either working or looking for work compared with the entire working-age population is now 64%, down from 65.7% when the recession ended in June 2009. That's the lowest level since women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers several decades ago. If you adjust for this drop, the unemployment rate would be close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%. Long-Term Economic Impact Not only does the shrunken labor force mask the real size of the unemployment problem in the country since only those actively looking for work are counted as unemployed it likely means that economic growth will be subpar going forward. "The fall in the labor force participation rate leads us to mark down the long-term potential output growth path of the American economy," University of California-Berkeley economist Brad DeLong wrote on his blog last month. "It is harder to pull people into employment if they are out of the labor force than if they are in the labor force and unemployed." The weak job market has also helped depress wages. Real median annual household income has dropped 5.1% since the recession ended, more than the 3.2% decline during the recession itself according to a new Sentier Research report. The smaller labor force is just one of the problems with the current unemployment number. The other is that the jobs being created aren't keeping pace with population growth. Since June 2009, the economy has added 1.4 million jobs, which is below the more than 2 million needed to keep up with population growth and far below the gains experienced at the same point in the previous 10 recoveries which saw job gains average more than 4 million. http://news.investors.com/Article/597581/201201121629/jobless-figures-hide-real-problems.htm There is no Obama recovery. This is not unexpected. _
All reputable economists predicted that the economy wouldn't recover before 2016. What did you want?....Obama to tell the truth....and if he did, you'd be harping on him for bad leadership. Blaming the economy on Obama is pure GOP electioneering, and the economy wouldn't be any better if McCain were elected. It won't get better before 2016 if you elect Romney.
This also means more and more borrowing, lower and lower gdp. GDP has strictly grown due to the monetary supply through false money printing.
Truth would be refreshing coming from Washington. He does have bad leadership...duh!!!! Maybe your right, it wouldn't be any better, but we also would not have how many other rules and regulations that have all cost us more money and I doubt the debt would be this high.
I don't blame Obama for the economy, I blame him for increasing our debt to levels that we cannot sustain, and in turn, caused us to lose our AAA credit rating. I blame him for policies that mirror that of California which drives out business. I blame him for 3 and 1/2 years of blaming Bush, and not being a good leader that would unite the country. So if that contributes to the dismal economy.....well so be it.
well said it's a ploy used by liberals to ask "what, do you blame obama for it" the same liberals fail to recall that Obama was a Senator prior to becioming the worst POTUS ever. he has done nothing but push forth failed policies and will be held accountable in November
Yep, liberals are making much of the drop in unemployment, but deny the truth that it's due to people giving up and no longer being counted. Shallow liberal idiots - not fooling anyone.....
me thinks you are a wee bit harsh you don't get it do you? Do you think this akin to when you found out there was no Easter Bunny? Absolutely not Obama worshipers are worse than that. Obama's failures to them is like someone who has undeniable proof there is no God to you and me He is their messiah and to find out that he is a false God is very hard for liberals to swallow
What a coincidence, that 2016 is theoretically the last year Obama could be President. You have no proof that the economy would not have been better off if McCain had been elected. Nothing besides a gut feeling brought on by nauseating levels of Obama love.
The economy might be better, but at what cost. Lets de-regulate big banks so they can create more and more predatory and unrealistic loans and stuff them into derivatives and shuffle them into oblivion until they explode. Result? Big money everywhere!! Great economy!!! Until....
Considering how deregulation and corporate greed were not the causes of the mortgage meltdown, I don't see how this is relevant.
Well the bls also has statistics for job growth and mostly it's been an incline since early 2009. I do however agree at this point Obama can't do anything to spur job growth. The dust has to settle with the European union and so forth. Although unemployment will indeed be down to below 8% come 2013.
The population of the US is growing. But one million workers drop out of the labor force. Not enough jobs are even being created to absorb youngsters entering the labor force. Does anyone think this is healthy?
It's a strawman because it doesn't fit in with your BiB hive mind. Let's do some simple math. If there are 10 million workers, and out of those 10 million 9 million find work and the other million don't, there is still going to be overall growth in the job sector, and unemployment will go down. That "fancy graph" comes from the very same bureau you are citing as proof of your own silted views. At any rate, BLS, Federal Reserve, and several economist have predicted the economy will not get back to normal levels until 2016 anyways, and very little of that has to do with Obama's policies, as the government didn't inject nearly enough money in the right places for it to matter, rather if anything it has at least sped up the recovery so that we aren't seeing above 10% unemployment but that still isn't nearly what Germany or Japan did. Now you can go to countries that spent several amounts of stimulus money, UK, Canada, and France. Their countries unemployment hovers around where ours is. Is that Obama's fault too? When this financial crisis started, if one could blame Bush it would be on him not allowing for more regulations within the housing market, but even so regardless if he did or not this was bound to happen, so believe it or not the very people that put us into this (*)(*)(*)(*) (Housing market, investment firms) will have to be the one that gets us out. Our people are to scared of their own government to use it to help us, so we always have to rely on the private sector that hurts us to help us in the long run, but first they have to figure out how to profit from us. What I think you really need to do is remember that Obama can't just give every single person a job, his policies can help as much as possible or he could try his policies and see what sticks but don't expect a miracle.
