Around the Nation: Job Numbers Still Bleak

Last Friday's job numbers showing that businesses created 151,000 jobs in October gave Barack Obama fodder for touting progress, but all is not as it appears. As the Heritage Foundation's Rea Hederman and James Sherk note in explaining the two surveys released by the U.S. Labor Department, "employment fell by a net 330,000 jobs ... the number of unemployed workers grew by 76,000 ... [and t]he median length of time workers stay unemployed rose from 20.4 weeks to 21.2 weeks." In fact, the only reason unemployment stayed at 9.6 percent is that "a net 462,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force and thus do not count as unemployed."

So bleak is the actual labor landscape that more than 25 percent of adult men are neither working nor looking for work, representing the highest recorded rate in post-war years. Overall, the labor force participation rate dipped to 64.5 percent, falling by 0.2 points.

According to Hederman and Sherk, at best, the job creation numbers signal only "a tepid recovery. At this rate, it will take years for the economy to recover the nearly eight million jobs lost during the recession." But not to worry. As Joe Biden says, "No doubt we're moving in the right direction."

Reposted from The Patriot Post Digest

Quote of the Day

"In other words, pushing inflation upwards means you can have your cake and eat it too. You can spend all you like and then make the bill disappear by driving down the value of the dollar -- buying with one hand the debt your reckless spending is issuing with the other. No need to cut spending, folks, just run the printing presses." -- Sarah Palin

Protectionism

"The biggest threat for sustainable growth at present is coming from protectionism in its different forms." -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Past Experience

"As to whether the president 'gets it' about the midterms, it doesn't matter. As Bill Kristol has observed, Obama is not in the same position as President Clinton was in 1994. Hillarycare was defeated. President Clinton was thus free to let voters know that he had gotten the message and would never try anything like that again. And he didn't." --columnist Mona Charen

Pot and Kettle

"No one nation has a monopoly on wisdom, and no nation should ever try to impose its values on another." --Barack Obama, who despite his rhetoric is always keen to impose his "values" on everybody else, no matter what

Quote of the Day

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -- H. L. Mencken in The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

I think that we've reached that point.

Quote of the Day

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- CS Lewis