XDA

It seems sometimes that government information is meant to hide the truth rather than reveal it. The job numbers for the month of October came out and they superficially seem good. 240,000 new jobs were created. Yahoo! That's above the merely keeping in place numbers we've been seeing. 213,000 was the increase in the civilian population that month so the new jobs finally outpaced the number of new people ready to work. But the smaller unemployment number went up to 7.3, the more accurate, larger U-6 number went up too, to 13.8, and the number of people in the work force dropped by 720,000 which is a lot and might be slightly inflated due to the short paid vacations the absolutely superfluous 17% of the federal government workers took during the month.

So, the percentage of people working has dropped during the early second term of the Obama Administration from the Bush Administration's 8 year average right around 66% to 62.8%, or approximately 7,772,000 less able-to-work civilians working. The participation rate is now the lowest it has been since the late 70's, during the splendiferous administration of Jimmy Carter. If the current civilian population available to work was participating at average Bush Administration rates, more than seven and a half million people would be working and thus spending more and paying more taxes as well. That would be a bare recovery and not what happened during the Reagan administration, where the number of employed went up, up, up and participation rates reached all time highs. I wonder what Reagan was doing that Obama is not? Wait, I take that back, I know exactly what Reagan did to allow the natural, rapid recovery after a steep recession just as I know exactly what the Obama Administration has done to sabotage that normally automatic rebound.

These are ugly facts from which the Obama Administration cannot really hide although coverage of these by the lap-dog media is virtually non-existent.

Labels: Labor Force Participation; L Shaped Recovery; Obama Administration