Category: US business

Wisconsin Conservatives passes on this corrective for those who rejoice in 7.8 percent unemployment:

The latest BLS figures show that only 58.7 percent of Americans over the age of 16 are employed.  This marks the 37th straight month under Obama that fewer than 59.0 percent of Americans have been employed.  To put that into perspective, the lowest percentage of Americans who were employed during the Bush–Obama recession was 59.4 percent.  The lowest percentage of Americans who were [employed] during the 20 years before Obama took office was 61.0 percent.  In other words, the worst month in the two decades before Obama was 2.3 points better than where we’re at now.

Only in Obama’s world of lowered expectations could 58.7-percent employment be viewed as cause for celebration.

That 61-percent number includes the post-Operation Desert Storm and post-9/11 recessions, by the way. The unemployment rate now matches the unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009. Nearly four years,  more than $1 trillion of “stimulus” and nearly $6 trillion of debt later, this is the best we get? Not since the Great Depression has employment taken this long to recover during a “recovery.” (And that was because of World War II, which should meet no one’s definition of “recovery.”) If jobs are the last thing to recover from a recession, jobs are not going to recover during an Obama presidency, whether four or eight years.

The Business and Media Institute adds:

Economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland noted in his commentary that “the unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent, because the number of self-employed jumped dramatically.” How much? He told Business and Media Institute he put the ballpark number at 700,000 newly self-employed. Morici also said that they couldn’t have all been full-time jobs and more likely were engaged in part-time work such as freelancing.

He said that labor participation had declined a great deal since Obama took office and caused most of the “reduction in unemployment from its 10.0 percent peak in October 2009.” He pointed out that if the participation rate had remained the same unemployment would be 9.8 percent; 10.7 percent if using the rate from beginning of Obama’s term.

Dean Baker, co-director of the lefty Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the result “almost certainly a statistical fluke.” “It is common to have large monthly changes in the employment numbers that are not consistent with other economic data,” he added.

The Street.com found other economic experts concerned about the increase in part-time work. “Daniel Alpert a managing partner of investment bank Westwood Capital noted the large benefit that part time workers gave to the unemployment rate. ‘Whoa, folks, stop the music,’ wrote Alpert, on Twitter. He noted a 582,000 increase in part time workers – a general negative – that pushed the unemployment rate lower. ‘The unemp. rate went down b/c of part time,’ wrote Alpert,” The Street reported.

Another number more accurately reflects the economy today. What the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the U6, or “labor underutilization” rate, remains at 14.7 percent. That includes not only the unemployed, but those who want to work full-time but are working part-time, and “discouraged” workers “who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months.”

The highest U6 rate during George W. Bush’s presidency was in December 2008, 13.5 percent. The lowest U6 rate during the Obama administration was in his first month in office, 14.2 percent.

The Obama economy doesn’t just affect the unemployed and underemployed, though. Sentier Research reported in late August that since June 2009, U.S. median annual household income dropped 4.8 percent, from $53,508 to $50,964.

The next point, from The Blaze, should be devastating:

It means household income has fallen more during the “recovery” (4.8 percent) than it did during the recession (2.6 percent). Just think about that.

There is simply no way that were the roles reversed, Democrats would not be crowing about the disastrous economy right now. I await Obama’s (or his sycophants’) explanation of why the unemployment rate’s drop is good news when it’s dropping because the number of workers is dropping. And I await anyone’s explanation for why, during a “recovery,” household income drops nearly twice as much as it did during the previous explanation.

A politically unaligned person might claim the economy may or may not improve with a change in the White House. It’s crystal clear from the past four years that the economy will not improve with another four years of Obama as president, and at least as importantly, the collection of those known as the “Obama administration.” Recall that Obama said in 2009, “If I can’t fix the economy in three years, you can call me former President Obama.”

Investors Business Daily shows the repercussions of nearly four years of the “You Didn’t Build That” presidency:

President Obama keeps blaming the faltering economy on his predecessor. But small-business owners believe the problem is with him. Survey results released last week by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business confirm this.

Nearly seven of 10 small-business owners and manufacturers (69%) believe Obama’s policies have hurt them, while 55% say they wouldn’t start a new business in the current climate. The same 55% say that “compared to three years ago the national economy is in a worse position for American small-business owners and manufacturers to succeed.”

At the same time, two-thirds say there’s too much uncertainty in today’s market for them to grow and hire more workers, and 55% say “efforts of federal regulators to work with small businesses are getting worse.”

Another survey, this one by the Clarus Research Group, backs up the NAM/NFIB findings. It discovered that 69% of small-business owners and managers believe that confounding government regulations are “major impediments to the creation of new jobs.”

While small companies are refusing to hire until the government releases its chokehold on them, commerce is on the decline. As measured by the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc., business activity contracted last month for the first time since 2009.

What these merchants and makers are saying should not be dismissed. Small businesses employ roughly half of all U.S. workers and are responsible for the bulk of hiring. They create more than 80% of all new jobs. That they feel America’s business environment is hostile is telling. …

Businesses don’t need any special favors from government. But they do need a president who believes government should get out of their way.

I keep asking …

Investors Business Daily has an answer:

If President Obama had run in 2008 promising to cut family incomes, shove more people into poverty, create greater inequality and make people more dependent on the federal government — and that black Americans would fare worse than everyone else — would he have won that election?

Well, the latest Census Bureau report shows that these are precisely the results Obama has delivered since taking office.

According to that report, median annual household income dropped by more than $2,000 in real terms since 2009, a 4.1% decline. Blacks fared even worse, watching their incomes fall 5.7% between 2009 and 2011.

And despite more than three full years of economic recovery, nearly 2.7 million more people are languishing in poverty than in 2009. The current 15% poverty rate is well above where it stood in Obama’s first year in office — 14.3%.

Here, too, blacks have fared worse, with the black poverty rate now at 27.6%, up from 25.8% in 2009. And while the number of whites in poverty dropped slightly in 2011, it continued to climb among blacks, the census data show. …

It just shows that government spending can’t generate prosperity for the middle class.

And it shows that when your policies choke off what should have been a solid economic recovery, the only ones who benefit are those already at the top.

You might try to blame these lousy numbers on the recession that started under Bush.

Except for the fact that the recession ended five months after Obama took office, and all these dire results occurred during Obama’s “recovery,” when his policies were in full effect.

Any wonder President Obama wants this to be a “choice” election, rather than a referendum on his record?

But a referendum on Obama’s record is a “choice” election. Just like 1980.

The Democratic National Convention begins today. (You’re welcome for the warning.)

The Republican National Convention one week ago was cut to three days because of Hurricane Isaac. The DNC was scheduled for just three days (which, in both cases, is three days too many) because unions cut back their DNC contributions because the DNC chose North Carolina, a right-to-work state, for the convention.

The Washington Post reports the Democrats’ weak rebuttal to “You didn’t build that”:

On Sunday, senior Obama advisers suggested that they will not address the anti-business allegations directly but will instead try to turn the tables on their GOP rivals by accusing them of being dishonest about what Obama meant. David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, said in an interview Sunday on ABC News that Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign is engaged in a broader pattern of dishonesty and is “built on a tripod of lies.” Plouffe cited accusations that Obama has gutted the work requirement for welfare and “raided” Medicare to pay for the nation’s new health-care law as other examples of untruths coming from the GOP.

The Obama team thinks that it has effectively dealt with the “build that” attacks and that the issue is overblown — the “drill, baby, drill” of 2012, a rallying cry for the right but ultimately one with limited appeal in the broader electorate.

Nevertheless, there are signs that they see a vulnerability. Obama has not repeated the words that sparked the controversy, and he has toned down the broader argument — that government help is essential to business success — in the six weeks since he ad-libbed the line near the end of a long campaign swing. His speeches have been shorter, with fewer references to wealthy Americans. He is more cautious about portraying the choice that he quite forcefully described that night between Romney’s worldview and his own.

Adviser David Axelrod, traveling with the president in Colorado on Sunday, said the public will come away from the convention “with a very clear sense” of Obama’s values, including his faith in private enterprise.

(I’ll pause here while you recover from those last five words.)

Jerry Bader points out how well the “build that” attacks are working:

“You didn’t build that” has been anything but an “empty hole” for Republicans. It has resonated with small business people, and many of those who work for them, all over the country. What hasn’t stuck is the defense by “fact-checkers” and the liberals they serve is the defense that the quote was taken out of context. Whether President Obama was referring to infrastructure and not small businesses when he said “you didn’t build that” is entirely irrelevant and the left knows that.

What is relevant is that Mr. Obama sees government more noteworthy in the growth of small business than the people who take the risks. It’s clear when you hear the entire quote that he is being dismissive of those who are proud of the businesses they built because they don’t give government enough credit. That’s why those four little words, as Kimberly Strassel called them in the Wall Street Journal, “you didn’t build that,” do strike fear into Axelrod and company.

I didn’t watch the Sunday morning talk shows, but apparently they didn’t go so well for the Democrats, as Bader further reports:

Team Obama now says Americans ARE better off than they were four years ago.David Axelrod whiffed on this, badly, on the Sunday Morning talk shows where he was unwilling to directly answer the question as to whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago. 

ABC’s Jake Tapper Reports that the Obama campaign has decided to fix that debacle by taking a do over.  If Republicans are smart, they can turn this about face to their advantage. After seeing how devastating yesterday’s barrage of evasion was they’ve now decided to simply change their answer. This is a target rich envrionment for Team Romney to exploit. Just ignore the second round of responses and use the video from the first, because that was when they caught not knowing what to say.

Well, let’s see. Unemployment is higher than it was four years ago. Personal incomes are lower than they were four years ago. Despite the weak economy, gas prices are double what they were four years ago. Those are the answers to this question: