Glacial Obama Jobs Growth Will Take a Complete Generation to Return to 5% Missing Jobs

The September employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate a glacial increase in employment.  The Obama jobs recovery over the last two years is at a rate adequate to return the U.S. to a real 5% rate of missing jobs in 18.5 years!  Add this to the four years under his presidency so far with awful unemployment and a complete generation will have passed before we return to a real 5% unemployment rate.  The real unemployment rate now is 12.88% and in September 2010 it was 13.73%.  The real rate of jobs growth under Obama in the last two years is at a rate of 0.425% a year.  Thus, to go from 12.88% missing jobs to 5.00% missing jobs will take (12.88% - 5.00%)/(0.425%/yr.) = 18.54yr.  Add the almost four years of the Obama presidency to this and one has a complete generation mired in a very sorry jobs economy.

Of course, Obama is presently holding back on many of the jobs-killing policies he wants to implement after he is re-elected.  These will likely wipe out the meager jobs growth we are presently seeing.  We also have to remember that the Federal Reserve is pouring $40 billion a month into the economy now, which should be able to purchase a few jobs upon the first pulse of that money surge.

The number of missing jobs and the real unemployment rate are given in the table below using the BLS Household Survey Data without seasonal adjustments:

The classical unemployment rate has fallen considerably, but it is substantially due to people quitting their job search.  The working age and available population increased from August to September by 206,000 people.  The number employed increased by 775,000 according to these Obama administration BLS numbers, though given the state of the economy, I find that number rather difficult to believe.  Unless, there are a lot of small business people out there who decided in September that Obama was not going to be re-elected and they are hiring on that belief!

Looking at the numbers of people unemployed, we see an even bigger decrease of 954,000 people.  If we assume that none of the 206,000 new working age people wanted jobs and 775,000 of the officially recognized unemployed found jobs, then another 179,000 people gave up looking for a job.  Does it not seem very unlikely that if 775,000 found a job in one month, that 179,000 who had just been looking for work would choose that time to stop looking for work?  There is something rather out of kilter in these numbers.  It may be that a lot more people really stopped looking for a job and decided they were by default self-employed.  These days, many of the self-employed are not able to pay themselves a salary.

But even if we use these numbers, there are 21,189,000 missing jobs now.  This is more missing jobs than were missing in September 2010!  Thanks to the population growth, the percentage of missing jobs has come down slightly though as noted above.  Here is the missing jobs chart:

Obviously the missing jobs chart does not show any major breakout in the rate of jobs creation once again in the last two and half years.

But, there may have been some jobs growth due to the decrease in savings rate and the increase in spending of Americans over the last two months.  A good part of that spending increase went to pay for higher gasoline prices, however.  The Economic Confidence Index improved in August, though many more Americans are still pessimistic about the economy than are optimistic.  The Institute for Supply Management Manufacturing Index rose to 51.5 in September from 49.6 in August, indicating expansion for the first month since May.  This expansion is based on the American economy alone, since world trade is decreasing.  Europe is importing less and while China is claiming to have a GDP growth rate of 7.5%, its real growth rate is about zero.  The service sector has been expanding all year, though it did the same in 2011.  In September, it was at 55.1 up from 53.7 in August.  Some of this service sector expansion is likely to have been generated by that $40 billion pumped into the economy in September by the Federal Reserve.  Mortgage rates have continued to fall as well and are now averaging 3.36% for a 30-year mortgage.  While mortgages are still hard to get, home sales have increased slightly.

I cannot see any reason whatsoever to give Obama any credit for the slight improvement implied by the latest jobs report, however.  We should long ago have had much better jobs growth.  Obama has worked overtime to cut down the U.S. economy with his wrongheaded economic policies.  The 1.3% GDP growth claimed in the second quarter is surely a zero or negative growth rate in terms of real real per capita GDP.  The cost of living index being used by the government understates our real cost of living so that the real GDP growth is overstated.  The adjustment for per capita GDP means that a 1% growth in GDP is just that due to the population growing at a 1% rate a year.  GDP has to grow faster than 1% so that our average standard of living will not fall.

The slightly higher 1.6% growth rate of GDP for the first half of the year is likely about a zero real real per capita growth rate.  This is a highly stagnant economy.  When Obama tries to brag about it and claim he is responsible for it, he is just showing his ignorance of the economy.  We do not have to share that ignorance.  If enough people do and he is re-elected, we will not see any significant improvement in the economy over the next four years.  His plan to increase taxes by another $1 trillion and to implement ObamaUncaringTax will be a great kick to the head for the economy.  Who knows how much more damage he will do as the rules for Dodd-Frank financial industry regulations are fixed or left unfixed so that no one can safely undertake any significant financial activity.  He is also about to march his EPA brown shirts out to strangle all coal-fired power plants and he will take more actions to generally impede the use of fossil fuels.  Of course, he will also continue the mal-investment of our tax money in impractical green energy schemes doomed to failure and run by his parasitic campaign donors.

Obama's Call to Service

I just read a speech given by Obama on 2 July 2008 in which he makes it very clear that he believes it is more honorable to serve others than to seek the fulfillment of one's own goals. He calls on Americans, especially young Americans, to serve in many ways which seems fundamentally designed to teach and train them to become the servants of the state. Make no mistake, Obama loves the old socialist dream of mobilizing the people to respond to a cause which is larger than themselves. This appeals to many people, but substituting a larger cause for ourselves has always led to the excesses of the socialist state. It recalls Lenin and Stalin in the USSR, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Castro in Cuba, Mao in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Hugo Chazez in Venezuela. This is a road we should be very careful not to go down.

He insists that we must serve a common purpose. No, there is no reason why we must serve a common purpose. We are free to pursue our own values, goals, and dreams. America has always prospered and been innovative and motivated by this individuality. Our government was designed to facilitate a society in which individuals could work voluntarily for such goals as a number of people had, but just as importantly, others with different goals were not required to contribute. In Obama's scheme of things, we are all obliged to find many goals we hold in common with all other Americans and then we must contribute to achieving those goals. Of course, he as president will determine what the many goals are and then he will require us all to contribute in the name of a higher purpose.

Fundamentally, Obama just does not get it. He says we "are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans." Somehow, from this he thinks it follows that we are obliged to see to it that everyone has a wonderful life and is happy. Well no, this is an impossible burden to put on everyone. It is not even possible for a person concentrating fully on their own life to always manage to have a wonderful life full of happiness. If we tell everyone that they should focus less on that and more on trying to make all other American lives wonderful and full of happiness, American lives will be less wonderful and much sadder. This is what has always happened in the socialist countries that pursued this course far down its road. This is in no way surprising - I cannot understand your life, values, and causes for happiness as well as I can understand my own.

Among other causes, we are called to reduce our energy dependence upon sources in other countries and to prevent climate change. We are warned that "our American Dream risks slipping away." Obama says, "I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States."

Surprisingly, he will ask more people to serve in the armed forces. He will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 200,000 with added slots for providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world. He will start an Energy Corps to conduct renewable energy and environmental cleanup projects. He will double the size of the Peace Corps. He will expand USA Freedom Corps to create an online network where Americans can browse opportunities to volunteer. He will fund R&D for nonprofits. He will start a Social Investment Fund Network.

He will integrate service into education, presumably the way Maryland does this. Students are not allowed to graduate until they have many hours of public service work acceptable to the state. This will not be voluntary in his case either, because he will not give federal money to schools unless they participate, which means the schools will force students to participate so they can get as much money as possible. This is a clear trampling of the rights of the individual to pursue their own happiness.

The Energy Corps will provide jobs for the nearly 2 million young Americans who are out of school and out of work. If they do not want to be in school, it is not clear they will want to be in the Energy Corps, but he has no concerns about this. He could allow many of them to find work if he removed the minimum wage rate laws, but he will not do that, since he loves that law. No, he wants them out of work so he can mobilize them for a socialist cause. He will put these disadvantaged young people to cleaning polluted areas, weatherizing homes, and gaining skills in a growing industry. I suppose the industry he has in mind is the Green Industry, supported by federal tax credits and subsidies and somehow able to achieve energy independence in 10 years. He will also expand the YouthBuild Program putting young Americans to building affordable housing in America's poorest communities, but he will not end local government building restrictions that make housing more expensive.

He says students want to end the genocide in Darfur (as soldiers?), farmers want to free us from the tyranny of oil (by turning corn into ethanol?), the oceans must be kept from rising. Every task on his wish list will be tackled by young or old volunteers and solved. Many of them will have little in the way of skills, but they will solve intractable problems, such as overcoming the huge natural forces that cause the earth's climate to change! No, he stupidly thinks it is only CO2 emissions that cause that. With such a Manager-in-Chief, we can be sure none of this multitude of unfocused programs will accomplish anything useful. They will only delay the professional training of our young people in their career paths.

But, every American will be forced to pay for this plethora of programs in which those who know nothing will be directed to solve every conceivable problem by those who have no management experience and lack the discipline of having to make a profit or even having to live within a budget. But, what a grand and glorious army of mobilized youth to pursue every socialist dream of the last 100 years! And at the head of this marching army, Commander-in-Chief Obama will lead them with his piping into endless folly.