Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Politics, Taxes | Tags: 2.6 Million Lost Jobs, Employment, Monthly Jobs Report
On Friday the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report. The nation’s unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent in April, despite the addition of 290,000 jobs. 66,000 of those were temporary Census 2010 jobs.
The increase in the unemployment rate was driven by 195,000 previously discouraged unemployed folks beginning to look for jobs again. In total, the U.S. economy has lost a net of 2.6 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his $862 billion stimulus plan. We are 7.6 million jobs short of the 137.8 million that he promised the economy would “save or create” by 2010.
There is 1). no statistical correlation between unemployment and how the $862 billion stimulus was spent; 2). Democratic districts received one-and-one-half times as many awards as Republican districts; 3). an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created. $286,000 for each job created!
The statistics are not, in many ways, very informative. I have a somewhat jaundiced view about who pays the bill, so since every government employee’s salary comes out of taxpayer pockets, I think government jobs should be a net negative, but that’s not how it works. People who are not looking, or whose unemployment has run out are simply not counted. The estimate of total unemployed runs around 17.1 percent. The one sector of the job market that is growing vigorously is the federal government.
The White House, for example, has hired somewhere around 34 Czars. These are separate from department heads, Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Assistance and so on. The White House has 1,700 aides — not regular staff, but aides. The IRS has added 160,000 workers, the better to see that you pay every cent that you owe. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that governments are increasing public sector pay at far faster rates than the private sector. President Obama specifically designed the stimulus to preserve government union jobs.
Washington jobs are increasing as private firms have been forced to hire legions of lawyers and lobbyists to try to protect themselves from Obama’s new agenda.
Most of the administration’s approach to the financial crisis has inadvertently contained large elements of job destruction. In the last seven recessions, small businesses have led the recovery. Taxes on capital gains are set to increase to 20 percent. Obamacare not only inflicts $503 billion in new taxes by 2019, but $87 billion of that come from employer mandate penalties. New laws make it harder for small businesses to hire independent contractors, and they are afflicted with new 1099 paperwork every time they do more than $600 in business with another entity. They do not intend to destroy jobs, they just don’t understand how jobs are created.
The current administration has a remarkable lack of experience in the private sector. No administration has had so little, and it shows. They seem to have little understanding of how jobs are created or what to do to encourage hiring in the private sector.
I went to the White House website to see what they had to say about the new job numbers. There was a lot of crowing about improved job numbers, no mention of numbers of unemployed and lots of promises. I did notice that under the “Issues” headline, neither employment nor unemployment nor jobs were listed, but I’m sure that was just an oversight, aren’t you?
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INAFG new movement
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/buffalos-message-to-obama_n_574717.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64C05X20100513?type=politicsNews ??????
Comment by Ron spins May 13, 2010 @ 7:55 am