If Barack Obama were looking for a further boost in his popularity from the new jobs data, he'd be disappointed. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.4 percent in December to 9.0 percent last month, in part due to a decline in the labor force participation rate to the lowest level since March 1984, and in part due to a statistical glitch that the Labor Department says makes the December 2010 and January 2011 non-comparable. But a somewhat different and more closely watched survey shows that the economy added only a paltry 36,000 jobs in January, a gain of 50,000 in the private sector offset by a decline of 14,000 in the public sector ...Presumably, they taught logic at the fancy-schmancy schools Barack and his minions attended. Despite that, there's a connection they don't seem to be making.
However you want to characterize these dismal data, unemployment remains “stubbornly above” the level that Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke says he finds acceptable -- so he will continue to buy government bonds and print money to pay for them. The recovery is neither robust enough, nor creating enough jobs, to satisfy him.
Increasing regulations and government spending has not resulted in more jobs.
What's so hard about this? The government is spending more than it ever has in the history of the country. The Federal Register is larger than it's ever been. If this was the answer, why isn't it working? Why do they continue to think that the solution is more spending and more regulations? In essence, they're saying that $3.5T wasn't enough, but $3.6T will get us over the hump. 8,532,101 pages of regulations* was too little. 8,721,771 will be the key to new job creation.
If it was going to work, wouldn't it have worked by now? Does anyone ever ask that question in the White House or Congress?
* - I'm guessing here. I didn't feel like looking anything up this morning. I don't think knowing the exact number changes the logical construct of their argument.
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