Historic deterioration of the labor market makes monthly jobs numbers meaningless. The unemployment rate is misleading because millions of jobless people are not counted.  The number-of-jobs-created headline is misleading because of an unprecedented increase in part time employment.  When the latest jobs report was published the White House guided headline writers with this spin from […]

The Commerce Department has issued its Economic report for the second quarter.  Gross Domestic Product or GDP increased by an anemic 1.7%.  First quarter GDP, which had already been revised downward from the initially reported 2.5% to 1.8% was further downgraded to 1.1%. Over at the White House web site Alan Kruger, the President’s chief […]

President Obama’s much hyped Big Economic Speeches were largely a rerun of his standard campaign speech, complete with the usual, bitter attacks on House Republicans and misleading or false claims of economic success including: Over the past 39 months, our businesses have created 7.2 million new jobs. The President hopes you’ll perceive this number as […]

The Commerce Department just downgraded America’s GDP growth during the first quarter of this year from the anemic 2.5% initially reported back in April to an alarmingly low 1.8%.  For context consider that average quarterly GDP growth during all non-recession periods from 1947 when quarterly GDP reporting began, through  2007 was 4.4%.  The chart below […]

The Labor Department announced that employers created 175,000 jobs in May.  Alan Kruger, Chairman of the President’s Council of economic Advisers, gave us the White House’s upbeat spin: Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that private sector businesses added 178,000 jobs last month. Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 175,000 jobs in […]

The gradual decline in the unemployment rate over the past 4 years does not reflect rising prosperity.  It is a statistical deception, due entirely to a shrinking labor force. The Labor Department’s Jobs report for the month of April once again called attention to the alarming drop in what statisticians call the “labor force participation […]

Rarely has there been a better opportunity to judge the validity of economic ideas than the last four, miserable years.  We have experienced in real time an audacious experiment, testing the theory of economist and progressive hero John Maynard Keynes that the government can buy prosperity by spending enormous amounts of borrowed money and the […]

During his first two years, with the support of commanding Democratic Party majorities in Congress, President Obama placed the biggest bet in US history on centralized government power.  The People lost.  We’re still losing. The Commerce Department just published its final revision of the 4th quarter 2012 GDP growth rate.  From October through December the […]

The headline jobs statistics understate the depth of America’s misery and despair. The White House and President Obama’s media groupies we’re popping Champagne corks when the Labor Department released its monthly jobs report showing that the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.7% in February, from 7.9% in January.  Employers created 236,000 jobs the fifth best […]

The labor Department reported the unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8% to 7.9% in January.  Most of the media marched in lockstep with the White House, emphasizing the other headline statistic, 157,000 jobs created in January.  While not enough to keep up with population growth that number was, as the loyal reporters chanted, “moving in […]