The weekly jobless claim numbers continue to be bad news. Expectations were that some 330,000 Americans would be filing for first-time jobless claims. The actual number was 339,000.
The more telling number is 63.4 percent, the number of Americans in the workforce — which is the lowest workforce participation rate since the Jimmy Carter administration.
You can download our data card to see how this number has worsened in the Obama era. People will say, “well, unemployment is 7.3% and President Obama inherited a mess.” For once I agree. He has now inherited his own mess. One of the first progressive socialist policy initiatives under President Obama was the Stimulus bill — y’all remember that right? It had the government spending close to $1trillion in taxpayer dollars to “stimulate” the economy.
However, what many Americans have truly forgotten, and the Obama administration certainly won’t remind you, is what was supposed to happen to unemployment as a result of the stimulus. At this time, it was supposed to be just 5.6 percent. Another broken promise.
Even more horrific, the Federal Reserve has taken over the role of chief “stimulator” through “quantitative easing” which means printing money to the tune of approximately $50-$60 billion per month. The Fed has taken up the mission to infuse money into our economy until the unemployment rate drops to six percent. It’s a house of cards.
Many will point to the Dow Jones Industrial average record numbers to illustrate how well the economy is doing, but that is a way wrong answer. We have effectively created an artificial economy — not a true free market economy and growth. If you factor in the number of Americans who have dropped out of the workforce and are no longer counted, our unemployment rate is closer to 11 or 12 percent. And consider how many Americans have been forced to part-time employment as a result of Obamacare’s definition of a full work week as 30 hours – not to mention seeing their wages depressed as food prices rise as their dollars are worth less.
The economy is ailing, but the medicine the Fed is dispensing might eventually kill the patient.
