The media has been trumpeting that the economy is running on all cylinders. Thanks to Ben Bernanke’s infusion of $80 billion a month into the financial sector the Stock Market is at record highs. The dirty little secret is that the actual value of the stock market is lower due to a devalued dollar. But it does not matter, the media is claiming we are back in the 90’s again and Obama is awesome. Reality is a starkly different story altogether.
March’s jobs numbers were very disappointing. Only 88,000 jobs were created for the month. The media will trumpet the drop in the unemployment rate to 7.6% as a positive. What they will not tell the public is that the drop is due to 496,000 people leaving the labor force. Want to bet the majority will be put on disability?
Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March (+88,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment grew in professional and business services and in health care but declinedin retail trade.Both the number of unemployed persons, at 11.7 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent, were little changed in March. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (6.9 percent), adult women (7.0 percent), teenagers (24.2 percent), whites (6.7 percent), blacks (13.3 percent), and Hispanics (9.2 percent) showed little or no change in March. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.0 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
In March, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.6 million. These individuals accounted for 39.6 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)
The civilian labor force declined by 496,000 over the month, and the labor force participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage point to 63.3 percent. The employment- population ratio, at 58.5 percent, changed little. (See table A-1.)
The jobs reports confirms the economy is not booming as the media claims it was. Zerohedge has an even darker and stark analysis of the numbers. The labor force participation rate is at 35 year low!
Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% – the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is “improving.”
Check out the charts Zerohedge has on this subject. It’s very frightening.
The economy is not roaring or on fire as the media has been claiming. Food stamps and disability claims continue to rise. This indicates an anemic recovery that is not benefiting American workers. Most of the job growth has been in low wage, part time jobs. The Obama Boom is the worse recovery on record.
None of this will matter to most Americans anyway. The media will continue to tell the American public that the economy is booming. OFA will send email talking points out and do Facebook postings extolling the Obama economy. The American public will continue to love Obama as their god-king. No bad news hurts this guy, even bad economic data.
Update: 81,000 people in March went on disability.
Almost as many people signed up with the federal government’s permanent worker disability program as got jobs in March, according to two sets of government data, continuing a troubling trend throughout the Obama recovery.
Last month, 81,804 workers left the workforce to join the Social Security Disability Insurance program. So far this year, nearly a quarter million workers have joined the program.
Over the past four years, 4 million left the workforce to go on disability. Even after accounting for those who dropped out of the program because of death or retirement, the ranks of the disabled have shot up more than 1.4 million under Obama.
This is where the people dropping off the rolls are going.
(Hat Tip: Iron Fist)