CATO Institute

Obama said that Congress better not muck up his recovery, as if it is all his doing. The man is arrogant enough to think he is responsible for business picking up and the unemployment numbers being better. I guess it’s only fair to take credit for the so-called recovery since he gets blamed for the down-turn when the numbers are bad. However, this would be true if it were not for the policies Obama is responsible for that has caused the decline in jobs and recovery. Right?

Taking credit for the recovery makes Obama think his policies are working when, in fact, the new election coming up is giving businesses a little faith in the future. A new president, who is more friendly to business –especially if it is Romney, a successful businessman–is really the reason that businesses have faith that the future will be better next year.

Conservativebyte.com has a few words on the subject, which I hope you will read by using the links in this article.

The newly released 8.3 percent unemployment rate is still a half a percentage point higher than when he took office. I know, right now you are probably thinking that nothing good can be credited to Obama if it’s reported by a Republican or Conservative. What could one possibly find negative about the 8.3 % unemployment numbers?

The report from Conservativebyte.com says “If we include those who have given up looking for work and those who could only find part time work, the unemployment rate stands at almost an entire percentage point higher than when Obama entered office.”

You may be thinking “so what”? The 8.3 % rate is still better than it has been. If you consider that,

in January 2009, 11.6 million Americans were out of work and 23 percent of them had been unemployed for more than six months,
and that today, there are 12.8 million unemployed and 43 percent have been out of a job for more than six months.
These numbers mean the average length of unemployment has increased dramatically since even the recovery started.
In June 2009, “only” 29 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed longer than six months and now the numbers are 43 percent of American out of work for more than six month. That is a half a percentage point higher than when Obama took office. We’ve all heard the excuses given by Democrats and the President that a bad economy was inherited when Obama took office, yet how long can that excuse be used before he takes credit for the bad numbers?
The number of unemployed Americans last month fell by 339,000, the fifth largest drop since January 2009. Shouldn’t that be something to celebrate?
Well, maybe we could celebrate if it were not for the much more shocking number of almost 1.2 million additional Americans who were classified in January as not being in the labor force–meaning they don’t have a job at all now!
Unfortunately, this has been the consistent story and has made this “recovery” unique as more and more Americans have just given up looking for work. See the numbers for yourself by the government Board of Labor Report.
This last number not only means that the official unemployment number is misleading, but it will also likely determine where the unemployment rate ultimately goes.
The Congressional Budget Office released last week projected unemployment rate for the next couple of years will be at 8.9 percent during the last quarter of 2012 and rise to 9.2 percent for the last quarter of 2013 (if tax cuts don’t expire at the end of this year, and if Congressional spending is reduced according to schedule).
The Congressional Budget Office was so concerned about these people leaving the labor force that they warned the current unemployment rate at the beginning of each month is quite misleading.
At the end of last year, the CBO cautioned that the official unemployment rate was about 1.25 percentage points lower than the real rate. In January, that gap was about 1.6 percentage points.
Let’s not forget the millions of Americans who have given up looking for work or have been forced to take part time jobs (with a drastic cut in their income and/or benefits).

When you click on links that show seasonal adjustments, you probably won’t understand what that means. Let me suggest you use this link to get an explanation of Obama’s fake job numbers because I sure can’t explain them.

However, the CATO Institute does a good job of summing up what I’ve just reported.

http://www.cato.org/multimedia/embed/5906