The White House might have found some good news in the "excruciatingly embarrassing" roll out of ObamaCare...at least it took attention away from a still lack-luster economy.
The September Jobs Report was finally released October 22, eighteen days late. The reason for the tardiness? Well, you know, the government was "shutdown." Apparently, all those number crunchers at the Labor Department were deemed "non-essential," too.
In retrospect, the President might have preferred that the Labor Department skip the September report all together. It's not good...again.
New jobs came in at 148,000; far below the expected 180,000, and barely enough to stay even with population growth. The Labor Force Participation Rate stayed stuck at 65.2%, the lowest since the Jimmy Carter "malaise" year of 1978. Americans are not going back to work.
A quick comparison of data changes for key statistics from September 2012 to September 2013 demonstrates how abysmal the Obama Non-Recovery really is.
1. Population: In the last 12 months, the Civilian Non-institutional Population as defined by the Labor Department has increased 2.396 million.
2. Labor Force: However, in that same 12 months, the Labor Force (those people with a job or actively seeking employment) has increased just 503,000. In other words, just 21% of the increase in population is reflected in growth of the Labor Force.
3. Employed: The number of Americans with a job during the same twelve months of supposed economic recovery increased 1.329 million. That may seem like a lot, but it is just 55.5% of the population growth for the period.Or, said another way, nearly 7% less than the anemic participation rate! And, that paltry rate of job growth doesn't begin to address the nearly 11.5 million unemployed and the millions who have completely left the workforce in frustration.
The Obama economic recovery supposedly started in June 2009, 51 months ago. He bragged at the time from the White House that, "We have rescued the economy from catastrophe." But, you'd never know it by looking at the data from his own Labor Department.