Monday, February 7, 2011

Newest Fox News piece: Why Can't Obama Do the Math On Jobs?

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

President Obama has a message for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today: You have an obligation to start creating jobs. The government has done what it needs to do and any failure lies with the private sector.
Indeed, the job numbers are bleak. Unemployment fell last month, but only because Americans have given up looking for work in record numbers. On net, 319,000 quit looking for work and left the work force in December. In November, it was even worse, 434,000. Over 1.5 million American have left the workforce since August.
Just 36,000 net jobs were added in December. -- That is far fewer than the about 150,000 needed just to keep up with the growth in the population.
This is a strange "recovery." Recoveries almost always add people to the labor force. As more jobs open up, recoveries are supposed to mean that people who had previously left the labor force during the recession hope they now have a chance to get a job and start looking again. Thus, they officially rejoin the labor force.
It is simply unprecedented that 19 months into the recovery, more and more Americans keep on quitting the labor force. (Here is a diagram that compares the growth in the number of people "not in the labor force" during the recoveries that started in 1982 and 2009.) . . . .

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