Labor Pains
In a testament to the power of the Union Label, this year Labor Day weekend was preceded with news that the country flatlined job growth for the month of August, creating exactly zero new jobs, while the unemployment rate remained stuck at an abysmal 9.1 percent.
It was the first time since World War II that the economy had precisely net zero jobs created for a month.
Economists had been expecting the report to show a net of 75,000 jobs created, an unusually low number considering the US is technically more than two years removed from the end of the last recession.
The real unemployment rate, the one that counts those who have given up looking for work, rose to 16.2 percent. Job creation for July was revised downward, from 117,000 to 85,000, with June’s numbers following suit, dropping from 46,000 to 20,000. Altogether, the numbers reflect four consecutive months of job growth well below the 100,000 new monthly jobs that most economists think are needed to help reduce the unemployment rate.
Meanwhile, the overall economy remains stalled with a negligible 1 percent growth rate.
If you think all this is bad news, you couldn’t be more wrong. At least according to Team Obama’s labor secretary, who greeted the latest jobs report with a positive spin.
“There are things that we know work that are waiting for action by the Congress,” US Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis told CNBC.
“I do believe that we’re going in the right direction, but we need cooperation and it begins with members of the House and the Senate agreeing to do something now,” she added.
Translation: it’s the GOP’s fault, and those nasty tea partiers, for obstructing and sidetracking my boss’s vision and plan to jumpstart the economy and get the country back to work. Which of course, as we’re likely to hear Thursday night during The One’s jobs speech, entails more stimulus spending as a means of job creation.
And we all know how well that worked the first time around. Just ask Hilda Solis.
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