Team Obama reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 163,000 in July making it seem like he grew the economy by 163,000 jobs. This is an out and out lie for sure.
First of all, the small-business household survey dropped 195,000 driving the unemployment rate up to 8.3 percent. So there was no “increase in jobs by 163,000 when 195,000 jobs were lost elsewhere. Beware of this lying spin month after month while the US economy weakens more and more under Obama.
By the way, wants some more absolute facts that Obama doesnt tell you because he thinks you are stupid? Well, the labor force shrunk by 150,000. The participation rate slipped to 63.7 percent. And the overall U-6 discouraged-workers unemployment rate increased to 15 percent. That’s bad, BAD news no matter how you try and spin it.
Average hourly earnings registered a slight 0.1 percent increase. But that only adds up to a 1.7 percent increase year-on-year, which is below the rising consumer price index.
So Team Obama will undoubtedly continue to tell us that jobs and the economy are getting better, but this mixed employment report completely takes the steam out of that argument.
A couple of other economic reports that came out this week raise red flags. The ISM manufacturing index came in below 50 for the second straight month, and the ISM services index is barely above 50. (Below 50 signals contraction.)
Meanwhile, factory orders fell 0.5 percent and are down 2.6 percent at an annual rate over the past three months. Even worse, core capital-goods orders (non-defense, excluding aircraft) fell 1.7 percent in June and have dropped 3.9 percent annually over the past three months.
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In other words, business investment is still weak. So are real consumer incomes. And the unemployment rate (explain this) continues to edge higher. All this springs from an economy growing no more than 1.5 to 2 percent.
Tax and regulatory threats are everywhere. From Obamacare and the EPA and the NLRB on the regulatory side, to the failure to extend all the Bush tax cuts, it’s a wonder businesses are investing and hiring at all — especially small businesses, which may have stopped dead in recent months.
My modest proposal for the worst economic recovery in modern times is threefold: Extend all the Bush tax cuts, slash the corporate tax rate, and approve and begin building the Keystone Pipeline. This is a supply-side proposal. It’s completely unlike all of Obama’s goofy, short-term, spending-and-tax-credit stimuli, which have completely failed.
