More Missing Jobs in March 2011 than in March 2010

While there are 869,000 more people employed in March 2011 than in February 2011, there are 263,000 more missing jobs in March 2011 than in March 2010!  Job creation by the private sector in March 2011 was fantastic, but so many jobs were killed by the idiocracy [consistent wrongheadedness while determinedly ignoring reality] of the Obama Central Planners in 2009 and 2010, that we have a very long way to go to recover from this Great Socialist Recession.  In January 2011 the American economy was missing 23,502,000 jobs and in March that number was down to "only" 22,339,000 missing jobs.  The real unemployment rate has fallen from 14.59% in January to 13.85% in March.

This is progress, but it may be very fragile progress, given that the prices of oil and gasoline are now so high.  Food prices have also risen substantially.  The Republican House of Representatives has as yet been unable to significantly cut government spending and seems even to lack the will to do so.  Since we have already had a double-dip recession, we may be in for a triple-dip recession.  The Democrat Socialist Party is trying very hard to make that happen with its anti-energy policies of treating CO2 emissions as though they are pollutants and denying nearly every attempt to explore, develop, and produce oil, gas, and coal resources in America.  They have reduced the job-killing consequences of ObamaCare by giving out huge numbers of exemptions to mitigate the future harm of that system to jobs and to dampen the criticism of that liberty-trampling fascist program.

The employment figures and the missing jobs calculation are given in the Table below.  The number of jobs is the actual number of working people, not seasonally adjusted jobs.  The number of missing jobs is based on the number of jobs plus jobs sought in January 2000, when jobs were plentiful and enticing.  67.49% of the total non-institutional civilian working age population wanted those good jobs.  If similarly good jobs were available now, I believe 67.49% of the civilian working age population would be working or looking for work now also.

The number of missing jobs since November 2009 is plotted below:  In December 2010, we actually had very slightly fewer missing jobs than in December 2010.  Unfortunately, the number of missing jobs shot upward in January, so that January, February, and March of this year each had more missing jobs than the corresponding month of 2010.  We have a very long ways to go yet in creating jobs.