Job Creation Remains Stagnated - 4.33 years of Stagnation

Almost all reports about the April unemployment numbers have been positive.  It is easy to see why people are grasping at straws given the bleak employment situation of the last four years and more.  But, a rational analysis of that situation shows it to continue in all due bleakness.  Let us observe the long term record of missing jobs based upon the percentage of the non-institutional working age population that chose and could find jobs in January 2000.  Jobs were plentiful and comparatively enticing then.  Now, not nearly so much.

The missing jobs record is shown below, based on the household survey without seasonal adjustment:

Given the record of false cost of living reporting by the government, I have been loathe to accept their seasonally adjusted employment figures for both lack of trust in their honesty and because in such extraordinary employment conditions over such a long time, it would be difficult to develop a good algorithm for the seasonal fluctuations.  So, we will need to compare April 2013 with April of 2012, 2011, and 2010 to see how the economy is doing in providing jobs.  There is only the very barest improvement since April 2012, but the number of missing jobs compared to April 2011 is virtually identical!  Worse yet, April 2010 had fewer missing jobs than the Aprils of 2011, 2012, and 2013!

This story of no improvement beyond just keeping pace with population growth, but not actually replacing the lost jobs of the deep government-induced credit collapse of 2008, has been the consistent story for 4 and one-third years now.  This has been a most extraordinary recession - - induced by government and maintained adamantly by government.

The employment record is given in detail in the table below:

Now let us compare the percentage of missing jobs, rather than the absolute number of missing jobs, for the months of April from 2010 through 2013.  Respectively, we see the real unemployment rate was 13.03%, 13.47%, 13.34%, and 13.14% for these April months.  This is pretty much as much stagnation as one can get.  Yes, the April jobs situation is not as bad as it was in March, but then in every one of the last four Aprils this has been true.  It is just part of the seasonal fluctuation in jobs.

There has been no headway in reducing the number of Americans who are working part-time for economic reasons.  In April 2012 there were 7,694,000 such unwilling part-time workers.  In April 2013, there are 7,709,000 such unhappy workers.  Far from a reduction in the high part-time work percentages created by the recession, there has actually been a small increase of 15,000 part-time workers.

In addition, there has been an increase in the number of persons working part-time for non-economic reasons, such as attending college.  These numbers have increased from 19.443 million in April 2012 to 19.829 million in April 2013.  This increase of 386,000 in part-time workers for non-economic reasons according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics classification does not necessarily mean that the reasons actually are non-economic.  In many cases, someone may be going to school rather than working because they otherwise think they cannot find a job.  Or, they may be taking care of a sick relative or children rather than paying someone else to do it, because they cannot get a good enough job to be able to pay someone else.

There is good reason to believe that the looming train-wreck of ObamaCare is discouraging small businesses from hiring full-time employees and in some cases from hiring part-time employees as well.  So, part-time work is increasing, while full-time work is in stagnation at decidedly recession levels.

This complete jobs stagnation record over such a long period is definitely the result and responsibility of the Obama regime.  The American private sector has to be knocked down continuously to keep it from recovering.  Obama and his socialist thugs are only too committed to doing exactly that.  One of their amazing feats has been to keep the American people completely distracted from the abysmal job creation record during the Obama administration time in power.  Gun control, immigration reform, and the micro-reduction in the rate of increase in government spending due to the sequester have been played magnificently as distractions from the wreckage of the American economy.