The government released its employment report for the month of May. The Obama administrateion boasted that the economy continues to recover because employers added 431,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell from 9.9 percent to 9.7 percent. Pretty impressive numbers, aren’t they? Well, not at all!
It’s like reading the small print. 411,000 of those new jobs were federal government jobs and they were temporary jobs at that. How’s that? Those 411,000 workers were hired to help with the census and those jobs will end in a few months.
When you get beyond the smoke and mirrors, a different employment picture begins to appear. The private sector delivered only 41,000 new jobs. This is far below the 150,000 to 180,000 new jobs that had been expected for the month. Furthermore, the rate on the number of long-term unemployed, those out of work 27 weeks or more, continued to be at its highest level since the 1940s when the Labor Department first began to collect such statistics.
And several economists are raining on the Obama administration’s parade. They are predicting another severe downturn before the economy finally does turn around. The administration cannot keep blaming this on Bush. Smoke and mirrors aside, the sour economy may turn out to be Obama’s Waterloo.
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