Jobs Report 15,000 Short Of ‘Maintenance Level’ Despite What Obamabots Tell You

Jobs Report 15,000 Short Of ‘Maintenance Level’ Despite What Obamabots Tell You




By Dell Hill via Hot Air

80,000 jobs created during October!

Wow, right?

Wrong.

Although 80,000 is better than a poke in the eye with a stick, it’s still about 15,000 jobs short of what most economists consider “maintenance” level - or just keeping up with the population growth of the country and those entering the job market for the first time.  Those economists who aren’t bonded at the hip with one political party or the other will tell you the truth - the situation is NOT good and showing no signs of anything that resembles a recovery.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey nails the Jello to a tree.

“We can safely expect the Obama administration to spin today’s jobs report as good news.  After all, some net jobs got created in October, even if they fell 15,000 short of the expectation of 95,000.  But as Clinton adviser and economist Robert Reich explained on MSNBC this morning, that’s actually going backwards in the context of population growth, and that makes this report decidedly not good news:



Reich actually uses the tougher floor of 125,000 net growth per month as a threshold for treading water, while others use figures that range from 100K-125K.  So far the economy has produced an average of about 125,000 net jobs per month, which is a maintenance-only mode — and October fell off the pace.

Reich isn’t the only one giving bad reviews from Obama’s side of the aisle, either.  The New York Times headlines the story, “Report  Shows a Mere 80,000 Added in US in October,” and originally included this excerpt:

While job growth is certainly better than job losses, a gain of 80,000 jobs is barely worth celebrating. That was just about enough to keep up with population growth, so it did not significantly reduce the backlog of 14 million unemployed workers. As a result, the unemployment rate hardly budged, dropping to 9 percent from 9.1 percent in September. The rate has not fallen below 9 percent in seven months. In the year before the recession began in December 2007, the jobless rate averaged about half that, at 4.6 percent.

That changed to this in a later revision, leaving out the “barely worth celebrating”:

October’s job gains were just barely enough to keep up with population growth, and so did not significantly reduce the backlog of 14 million unemployed workers.

The unemployment rate was 9 percent in October, slightly lower than September’s 9.1 percent but about where it has been for the last seven months. By contrast, in the year before the recession began in December 2007, the jobless rate averaged about half that, at 4.6 percent.

Admittedly, that “barely worth celebrating” sounded like editorializing and probably should have come out of the report, but its original inclusion is indicative of the frustration building from Obamanomics.”

Read Ed’s entire piece by clicking right here.