Big Government thinks what President Obama claims to be a recovery isn’t:

The national unemployment rate is now 8.5% (December’s), its lowest level since January 2009, but while some saw this welcome news as something to celebrate, it hides a much darker economic picture: the jobs report vastly undercounts the unemployment rate. Moreover, as of this writing, we don’t know if December’s jobs report is a trend, or if, as some economists predict, economic growth will slow in the first quarter of 2012, forestalling some of the gains made. In November, the unemployment rate fell from 9% to 8.6%, but this was not due to an increase in jobs, but due to a decrease in the numbers of people “actively seeking” them. …

In December 2007, the U.S. economy employed 146 million; today, four years later, it employs 140 million. The population has grown; the number of jobs has declined.

No economy is sustainable under the conditions in those last two sentences.

But wait! There’s more!

Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence and co-author Sandile Hlatshwayo estimate that from 1990 to 2008 all net job creation has been in the “non-tradable sector,” chief among them health care and government jobs. Alas these sectors aren’t known for their productivity and are hardly the jobs that can propel the growth necessary to accommodate a new workforce. The manufacturing jobs which once went to the growing middle class is getting more productive—but with fewer workers and more machines.  In 2009—the height of the recession—productivity in U.S manufacturing increased by 7.7%, more than any other country followed by the Bureau of Labor. America’s share of world manufacturing stood at 20% in 2009, down only 2%.

If America is to beat this recession, it will need new firms, churning out new jobs. Indeed, according to the Kauffman Foundation, America’s leading funder of economic research, since 1980 nearly all net job creation has come from firms that are less than five years old. But since 2007, new firm formation has slowed. The number of new companies formed in 2009 is 27% lower than past years, meaning that companies formed in 2009 employ one million fewer workers than the historic norm.

More skepticism comes from Ace of Spades HQ, commenting on Newt Gingrich:

For me, it was the part where he stood up for work. Where he discussed the essential virtues of work. Nobody does that anymore. It was refreshing. It was important to me to hear someone say it. To hear that someone has a f*cking clue what’s going on down here in Realityland. We are out of work and we want it.

This administration seems to think that Americans should view work as a vampire perceives holy water, and nearly every policy out of DC reflects that.

Well, we don’t think that way. We’re Americans. We want to work. Dammit, we’re ready to get back to it. Give us the reins to our own lives, stick your food stamps back in your ass where they came from, and get out of the way. You’re killing us.

This message resonates. That’s why Gingrich won. Not just the slap at ‘the elites,’ but the content of the slap. The part where all work is good work and no one should consider themselves demeaned by what is *good.* Yeah, that may have been pre-formulated, and Juan Williams walked right into it. So? It needed to be said. Most of us thoroughly enjoyed hearing it clearly and unambiguously elucidated.

Currently, several of my friends and family are out of work, or underemployed. I’ve never seen things this bad in my life. Many of my clients who are technically self-employed simply have had nothing to do for the past three years. They are depleting their savings and selling family heirlooms at auction, while they make pocket cash at a department store to get by.

Meanwhile, the OWS crowd is complaining that no one has coronated them with cushy positions and free stuff the minute they got out of college, and resent the implication that they might have to work some menial jobs for a while until they get their stuff together, the way most everybody else in this country has had to for generations.

This is bad. This is real bad. There’s an ideological rot in this country, eating away at our vitality and encouraging parasitism and sloth. The only reason Obama has gotten away with implementing his job-killing agenda is because a lot of damn people need to get their heads right. Newt Gingrich put his finger on a raw nerve, and was rewarded for it.

And you wonder why most voters think the U.S. is in decline?