Obama, The Media, and The Great Jobs Scam of 2012

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We've all been hearing a lot lately from the Democrats in Washington, the main stream media, and of course President Obama, how the U.S. economy has been getting better and better. This news couldn't have come at a better time for the President either, with this being an election year and the race for the White House starting to heat up. So what's been fueling this sunny optimism? In a word "Jobs".

One look at the employment numbers that have rolled in over the past 2 years, and it's hard to argue that economically, things are finally looking up in America... Or are they? Let's take a look.

After peaking at 10.0% back in October 2009, the unemployment rate has finally come back down to where it was after Obama's first month in office, with a big chunk of that coming in the last 4 months. On top of that, we've had 16 straight months of positive job creation, with over 400,000 jobs created in the last 2 months alone. Although those numbers weren't what I would call great, they were certainly positive and what most people believed indicated at minimum, that moderate progress had been made over the past 28 months... Then I decided to look a little deeper into the job figures and I discovered a statistic at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website called the "Employment to population ratio." That statistic shed a whole new light on things, and brought to the surface the reality of our economic progress.

The "Employment to Population Ratio" is a statistic that goes hand in hand with the unemployment rate. What it does, is it uses the "Civilian noninstitutional population", which is total number of people that are of legal working age and eligible to work in the U.S, and the total number of people in the country who are currently employed, and gives you the percent, or ratio, of those who are employed, to those who could be employed. The relationship between it and the unemployment rate however, is an inverted one. That is to say, that when one goes up, the other goes down and visa-versa.

Since 1948 when the government started keeping these statistics, through the end of 2009, you could look at the EP Ratio and determine within a few months when the unemployment rate had peaked and began coming down. All you had to do is find the point where the ratio bottomed out and began to rise, (which has happened over a dozen times) and it matched it every single time. This is demonstrated with the following graphs taken from the BLS website:



When you take the EP Ratio graph and invert it, that is to say, flip it over, then superimpose it with the unemployment rate, you see just how remarkably similar these two statistics are, and the reason why they go hand in hand with each other.



It only makes sense that when the unemployment rate goes down, the percentage of the eligible workforce that's employed in America has to go up... Right?

Now take a look at what happens when I expand those graphs to include the last 2 years:

View attachment 67123074

Notice that their relationship seems to change? Upon closer examination, I noticed something startling... Something that just didn't seem to make sense. What I found was, that since October 2009 when the unemployment rate peaked at 10% and began coming down, the EP Ratio which was at 58.5, hadn't changed at all. In fact, as of January 2012, the EP Ratio is exactly the same as it was back in October of 2009, even though the unemployment rate has gone down nearly 2 points.



How could that possibly be? How could we have 16 consecutive months of positive job creation and unemployment coming down so significantly over the last 28 months, with no increase what so ever in the percentage of the American workforce who are employed?

The reason is clear (and for lack of a better term), the Unemployment rate is a scam... One in which the main stream media in America seems all too happy to willing participant in.

These numbers confirm what those outside the main stream media have been saying all along, that the unemployment rate failing to account for those who have given up looking for work, makes it an inaccurate measure of economic recovery. It shows that the real unemployment rate in America hasn't changed a bit since it hit 10% in October 2009. In fact, after Obama 's first month in office, the unemployment rate was 8.3%, which is exactly the same as it is today, yet the EP Ratio is nearly 2 points lower now (58.5), then it was back then (60.3).

Those statistics also confirm another sad fact. They confirm that the 16 straight months of positive job growth, which the Obama Administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill have claimed is proof that the stimulus package they passed in 2009 worked, only managed to barely keep up with the population growth since the end of 2009, and haven't resulted in any measurable progress at all.

In a nut shell, these numbers prove 3 things: That the economy hasn't improved in nearly 2 and a half years, that the Obama stimulus package was an 800 billion dollar failure, and that we have a main stream media in America that's willing to do what ever they can to cover up the truth in order to get Barack Obama elected to a second term as president.

Grim17
2/27/2012

 

[mrsellr]

In the six months prior to Pres. Obama taking office, GW policies cost the country 4 million jobs.

It cost another 4 million before BO's policies were accepted -- all of which are attributed to him of course and not GW.

The recession created by GW policies cost a total of 13 million jobs in all which conservatives blame on BO.

The only blueprint for bringing an economy out a recession that deep was created by FDR, a plan denied BO by conservatives who wanted to make him a one-term president and told him that government can't create jobs!

In 2010, TP Congress ran on a job creating campaign but once elected refused to bring BO's job bills to the floor for discussion, even the ones that were fully paid for! Job bills that did come to the floor, resulted in 29 fillibusters and defeat.

Also, GOP governors did away with over 50,000 fed, state & local jobs, which went against BO's unemployment totals.

When Congress or the president attempted to talk about creating jobs, the GOP brought up one "wedge issues" or another, and assisted by mainstream media controlled by Wall Street interests, beat the American people into a fenzy over such non issues as the building of the temple at ground zero, and recently the women's contraceptive and pre-natal rights.

Now Congress is stalling on the transportion bill and is trying to get out of passing much of it, for fear of making the president "look good".

 

[Cardinal Fang]

To prop up the employment-to-population ratio, you would need to tell older Americans who are tired and wish to retire that they cannot, but must keep working instead. You would need to tell younger Americans who want to continue their studies that they cannot, but must leave school and get a job instead. You would need to tell mothers who wish to leave work in order to raise their young children that they cannot, but must stay on the job instead. What a completely corrupt and depraved understanding of labor markets and employment statistics this whole thesis is.