One Day After Obama Touts Economy in Big Speech, Worst Jobs Report in Five Years Posted For May

Katie Pavlich | June 03, 2016 11:00 AM

Yesterday President Obama made a visit to Elkhart, Indiana to tout the so-called economic recovery as a roaring success and reason to elect Hillary Clinton in order to preserve his legacy. He also took the opportunity to slam Fox News for reporting the truth about a slow economic recovery.

Many living in Elkhart rejected Obama taking credit for the economic progress of hard working businesses in the area and a new jobs report out today is the worst we've seen on the employment front in five years. Don't be fooled by a declining unemployment rate, just 38,000 jobs were added last month. People are giving up their job search and leaving the work force, as they've been doing for years.

U.S. employers drastically slowed their hiring in May, adding just 38,000, the fewest in more than 5 years and a sign of concern after the economy barely grew in the first three months of the year.

At the same time, the unemployment tumbled to 4.7 percent from 5 percent, the Labor Department said Friday in its monthly unemployment report. The rate, to its lowest point since November 2007, fell for a problematic reason: Nearly a half-million jobless Americans stopped looking for work and so were no longer officially counted as unemployed.

The much-weaker-than-expected jobs report will raise doubts that the Federal Reserve will increase the short-term interest rate it controls at its next meeting in mid-June or perhaps even at its subsequent meeting in late July. Many analysts had expected an increase by July.

The government has estimated that the economy grew at just a 0.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter.

The RNC is calling the report "devastating" and reminding voters a Hillary Clinton presidency will simply be an extension of the Obama non-recovery.

“This devastating jobs report showing the weakest hiring in five years is the latest indication we need to move away from the failed Obama policies Hillary Clinton is promising to continue. The percentage of Americans in the labor force is the smallest since 1978, and last month 12 times more people gave up looking for work than found a job. This is unacceptable," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus released in a statement Friday. “Just this week President Obama was trying to convince Americans they’ve never had it so good, but on his watch wages have remained stagnant, economic growth has slowed to a crawl, and the middle class has continued to shrink. By running on four more years of Obamanomics, Hillary Clinton is guaranteeing that struggling Americans will never get ahead. Donald Trump is a successful businessman who knows what it takes to create jobs and get our economy back on track. As this report makes clear, we need that kind of thinking now more than ever in the White House.”