9.5 million people have left the workforce under Obama

BLS Labor Force Participation April 2013

CNS News explains the real state of the work force in America.

Excerpt:

9.5 million Americans have left the workforce during the presidency of Barack Obama, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In April, the total number of Americans counted as “not in the labor force” declined for the first time since December, but that number was still near a record high at 89,936,000.  

Those not in the labor force declined by 31,000, from a record high of 89,967,000 in March.  That broke the recent record of 89,304,000 not in the labor force in February of this year.

Since February 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, 9,549,000 people have left the labor force.  There were 80,387,000 Americans not working that month, compared with 89,936,000 not working or looking today, according to the latest economic release from BLS.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) labels people who are unemployed and no longer looking for work as “not in the labor force,”and that includes people who have retired on schedule, taken early retirement, or simply given up looking for work.

In the 50 months since Obama has been in office, the number of people counted as not in the labor force has declined 16 times.

Remember that during that period, we have been adding more people through birth and immigration, and running up our national debt by over SIX TRILLION dollars since Obama took office (total debt is now $17 trillion). When you spend that much money, you should be seeing MORE people employed. And you would be seeing that, if it’s being spent on private sector job creation. But it’s not. It’s being wasted. And the very people who voted for Obama – the young people – are the ones who will have to pay it all back. Without jobs! Is collecting money from government welfare a long-term solution to repaying the debt? That’s what we are doing now – putting millions of people on disability and welfare. Is that going to help them to pay back all of Obama’s borrowing later?

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Filed under: News, Borrowing, Economy, Job Creation, Jobless, Joblessness, Jobs, Labor, Labor Force Participation, Labor Market, Obama, Spending, Stimulus, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate, Women

200,000 fewer people are employed, labor force participation reaches 1979 level

Labor Force Participation 2013 March

CNS News writes about some of the numbers from the latest jobs report.

Excerpt:

 A record 89,967,000 Americans were not in the labor force in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is an increase of 663,000 from the 89,304,000 Americans who were not in the labor force in February.

Since President Barack Obama was first inaugurated in January 2009, 9,460,000 people have dropped out of the labor force.

The BLS counts a person as not in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16 years old, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and have not actively looked for a job in the last four weeks. The department counts a person as in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and either do have a job or have actively looked for one in the last four weeks.

The number of people that BLS considers “in the labor force” affects the unemployment rate–which is the percentage of people “in the labor force” who are unable to find a job during the month. If someone previously considered “not in the labor force” were to go out and search for a job and not find one, they would have to be counted as in the labor force for that period–and thus would increase the unemployment rate.

To the degree that Americans choose to simply drop out of the labor force rather than search unsuccessful for a job they decrease the unemployment rate.

In keeping with the increase in the number of people not in the labor force, the labor force participation rate decreased from 63.5 percent in February to 63.3 percent in March. The labor force participation rate is the percentage of Americans in the civilian population over age 16 who did not have a job or seek a job during the month.

One of Obama’s favorite constituencies also has a lot to think about with this report. The labor union voters, who thought that socialism would provide them with “good paying jobs”. Well, socialism did provide someone with good-paying jobs. When union workers voted for anti-business radical, there were lots of good paying jobs created by American companies – just not in America. That’s what attacking business achieved, it made them expand elsewhere or close up entirely. Obama’s union supporters need to think about whether they can make a living on gay marriage alone.

And that’s not all:

The number of American workers collecting federal disability payments climbed to yet another record of 8,853,614 in March, up from 8,840,427 in February, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.

[...]March was the 194^th straight month that the number of American workers collecting federal disability payments increased. The last time the number of Americans collecting disability decreased was in January 1997. That month the number of workers taking disability dropped by 249 people—from 4,385,623 in December 1996 to 4,385,374 in January 1997.

As the overall number of Americans collecting disability has increased, the ratio of full-time workers to disability beneficiaries has decreased.

But there is some good news in the new report:

Figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday show that 315,000 women dropped out of the labor force in March.

According to BLS, the number of women not in the labor force grew to 49 million in March, up from 48.7 million in February, continuing a trend of women leaving the labor force in every month of 2013.

This is good news because one of Obama’s biggest constituents is unmarried women, with or without children. These are the people who are most likely to vote for a President like they might vote for a contestant on Dancing with the Stars or American Idol. The people who switched their votes because Al Gore kissed his wife as a staged event. The Sandra Fluke wing of the Democrat party. The good news is that now they have something to think about before the next election besides free contraception.

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• Obama: private sector job creation is “doing fine”
• New jobs report: unemployment rises and 70% chance of recession
• Economy improving? New CBO report says that real unemployment is at 15%
• 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month

Filed under: News, Borrowing, Economy, Job Creation, Jobless, Joblessness, Jobs, Labor, Labor Force Participation, Labor Market, Obama, Spending, Stimulus, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate, Women

State Department report finds that Keystone XL pipeline is safe for the environment

The Heritage Foundation reports.

Excerpt: (links removed)

In Washington, a presidential Administration releases news it doesn’t like at 5 p.m. on Fridays. So it pays to pay attention when everyone is leaving work for the weekend.

Late last Friday, the State Department released a positive environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has been delaying this pipeline—which would carry oil from Canada to refineries in Texas—for more than three years.

The delay has meant that America is still waiting on an additional 700,000 to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from a close ally, not to mention 179,000 American jobs.

Why has this taken so long, when all environmental reports thus far have been positive? Heritage’s Nicolas Loris, the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow, explains:

Given the need for jobs and more oil on the global market to offset high prices, the permit application had been moving along positively with bipartisan support without much attention until environmental activists made blocking the Keystone XL pipeline their issue to rally around for 2011. Although President Obama and the Department of State (DOS) said they’d make a decision at the end of 2011, they ultimately catered to a narrow set of special interests, punting the decision until after the 2012 elections.

The State Department, which is overseeing the pipeline because it crosses a U.S. border, has “already conducted a thorough, three-year environmental review with multiple comment periods,” Loris reported last year.

The review has been comprehensive:

DOS studied and addressed risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, wildlife, and endangered species. They concluded that the construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by DOS and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

This confirms the previous assessment done by the Nebraska government, which concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline was safe for Nebraska’s environment as well.

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Filed under: News, Alberta, Bankruptcy, Barack Obama, Budget, Clean Energy, Corruption, Crony Capitalism, Cronyism, Deficit, Economics, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environmentalism, Evergreen Solar, Global Warming, Government waste, Green Energy, Green Jobs, Growth, Jobs, Keystone, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Media Bias, Oil and Gas, Pipeline, Solar Power, Spending, Stimulus, Taxes, Unemployment, Unions, Waste

Obama violates his own stimulus law by refusing to release status reports

The Weekly Standard reports.

Excerpt:

Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck.

Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.

Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen.  Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months.  It reads:

“In consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers shall submit quarterly reports to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives that detail the impact of programs funded through covered funds on employment, estimated economic growth, and other key economic indicators.”

[...]By now, [the Obama administration] was supposed to have released fourteen such reports.  It has released only eight.  The last one covered the period ending in June 2011.  That’s right — 2011.

With only 58.6 percent of Americans currently employed — down 2.4 percent from the time of Obama’s first inauguration — it’s not surprising that the Obama administration doesn’t really want to fulfill it legal responsibilities and release subsequent reports on its failed “stimulus.”  However, it hardly seems fair — to use one of Obama’s favorite words — that the rich and (extremely) powerful think that they can choose whether or not to abide by the laws they spearhead and sign, while the rest of us are forced to obey them.

I’m not surprised by this, because we all know that Democrats are the biggest tax cheats ever. It’s not surprising to me that they pass laws that they have no intention of following themselves, because they are hypocrites. The laws are meant to stop others from succeeding, but Democrats themselves always seem to be exempt. Just like the waivers that the big labor unions got from Obamacare. Poverty for thee, but not for me.\

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Filed under: News, Business, Community Organizer, Corporations, Debt, Deficit, Democrat, Democrat Party, Economics, Employment, Feelings Vs Evidence, Government Spending, Government waste, Intentions Vs Results, Jobs, Keynes, Keynesian, Kickback, Payoff, Pork Barrel, Porkulus, Professor, Solyndra, Spending, Spendulus, Stimulus, Unemployment, Waste

Obama’s first term: number of Americans not in labor force rises 8,332,000

Democrats take over House and Senate in 2007

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The number of Americans age 16 or older who decided not to work or even to seek a job increased by 8,332,000 to a record 88,839,000 in President Barack Obama’s first term, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, the number of retired workers collecting Social Security increased by only 4,234,480.

The increase in Americans opting out of the labor force during Obama’s first term resulted in a decrease in the labor force participation rate from 65.7 percent in January 2009, the month Obama was first inaugurated, to 63.6 percent in December 2012, the latest month reported. Before Obama took office, the labor force participation rate had not been as low as 63.6 percent since 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter.

To be in the labor force a person must either have a job or actively sought one in the previous four weeks.

When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, there were 80,507,000 American civilians age 16 or older who did not have a job or seek one. In December 2012, there were 88,839,000—thus, the increase of 8,332,000.

In early 2007, the unemployment rate under George W. Bush was around 4.4%. The media at the time was not impressed with such a “high” amount of unemployment. Starting in mid-2007, we saw a huge spike in unemployment, just after the Democrats took over the House and Senate. The media is now thrilled that unemployment is now much less of a problem than it was under that evil capitalist George W. Bush, so it’s not worth reporting on.

Related posts

• 73% of the new jobs created in the last 5 months were government jobs
• Unemployment rate is 10.5%, counting those who have stopped job-hunting
• Obama: private sector job creation is “doing fine”
• New jobs report: unemployment rises and 70% chance of recession
• Economy improving? New CBO report says that real unemployment is at 15%
• 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month

Filed under: News, Borrowing, Economy, Job Creation, Jobless, Joblessness, Jobs, Labor, Labor Force Participation, Labor Market, Obama, Spending, Stimulus, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate