NYC Letter: The Obama Economy, Part III

Day 178 of CHOPE

We need desperately to get this economy moving. We've got to create more jobs now.

Joe "Hi-Q" Biden,
then-VP-elect and soon-to-be stimulus policeman,
emphasizing the Obama presidency's top priority
December 23, 2008 (FNC)

With respect to the employment issue, obviously I don't have a crystal ball. ... Now, this has been a more severe recession than we've seen since the Great Depression, so how employment numbers are going to respond is not yet clear.* My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months.

... The last recession that we had, the recovery was termed a "jobless recovery." We can't repeat that approach.

Mr. Obama,
venturing a guess on unemployment without a crystal ball
five months after signing his massive stimulus into law
WASHINGTON July 14, 2009 (White House)

I'm absolutely, positively confident we are on the right track.

Joe "I'm No Economist" Biden,
absolutely, positively confident you are this stupid
RICHMOND, Virginia July 16, 2009 (RTD)

IF there is a recovery going on that we have somehow missed, it is a jobless recovery. [Pause.] Because there are no jobs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Unemployment has increased 125% since Mr. Obama took office, 117% since Mr. Obama signed his stimulus. Team Barry sold the stimulus as a jobs bill, but it has produced a scant 150,000 undocumented jobs "saved** or created" against a loss of 3,362,000 jobs since the stimulus was signed into law. Whatever Team Barry thinks its stimulus has wrought, it has not wrought jobs.

In the teeth of last month's job losses Mr. Obama claimed "we're moving in the right direction". Mr. Biden spotted "encouraging signs". They are back this month bereft of predictive power but reassuring us nonetheless that Team Barry is "absolutely, positively on the right track". Other than its own dishonest cheerleading, what can Team Barry show for its $787B stimulus? [A long hard pause.]

Here is what Team Barry promised: enacting their stimulus, unemployment to peak at 8%.

FIGURE 1 (A)
[Graphic Source: Job Impact Of The American Recovery
And Reinvestment Plan, January 9, 2009]

Here are their results.

FIGURE 1 (B)

CHOPE.

Joblessness. Cluelessness. Shamelessness.

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* No crystal ball required. Mr. Obama signed his stimulus into law on February 17 of this year. The BLS gives the following seasonally adjusted numbers for job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs (Table A-8) since then:

** There is no metric for "saved" jobs (and this).