The Obama administration knows that no President has ever been re-elected with an unemployment rate above 8 percent. After 44 months of unemployment over that level, today's employment data for September magically showed an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent. This miracle was accomplished with the addition in September of only 114 thousands jobs. Arguably Ronald Reagan inherited an economy that was worse than the one inherited by President Obama, and by this point in the Reagan recovery the economy was adding 500 thousand jobs a month. So how, you may ask, did the Obama administration lower unemployment with such pathetic job growth? The answer can be found in the work force participation rate.
The work force participation rate is the percentage of working age adults who are employed or actively seeking work. This number is a full 2 percentage points lower than when President Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009. This means that the administration has written off millions of unemployed people in order to make it appear that a higher percentage of people are employed. If the work force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7 percent.
The current employment numbers are not even up to the task of a recovery that is just beginning, let alone one that is over 3 years old (the official recovery began in June of 2009-Remember Joe Biden calling it "Recovery Summer"). Even if you accept the bogus unemployment number that was reported today, it is exactly where it was when the President started his term. So after 6 trillion dollars in new debt, we are back to where we started. What did we get for our money? The administration wants everyone to believe that happy days are here again. Tell that to the millions of unemployed, under-employed and the millions that have been dropped off the face of the earth by this administration. I'm sure those people are not doing a jig over the spurious data used by the administration in order to keep a failed President in office for four more years.
Th U6 shows more, being about 15% & having been 17%, but has been pretty proportional (almost double) to U3. There are still more unemployed whom want or can work, but not counted, as evidenced by the mentioned participation rate. More people are claiming disability & giving up to receive handouts, which is helped by HHS marketing to get more on the roles.
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