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U.S. Workers Suffer in Obama Economy

As the President delivers his State of the Union address tonight, Americans will reflect on the state of their own personal situations. Despite diligent attempts by federal agencies to paint a rosy picture, the reality is average citizens are enduring difficult times. Employment and wages are faring poorly.

Let’s start with wages.  Marketwatch reports that wages have recently declined. “Average wages fell a penny to $25.24 an hour.” Normally, after the end of a recession, wages are expected to rise, leading to further belief that our economy, rather than recovering, is heading in the wrong direction.

Those workers with declining pay may still consider themselves fortunate, however, since they, at least actually have jobs. Despite the fact that the White Houses claims that unemployment has been reduced, a closer look reveals a far more troubling picture.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 292,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent…Employment gains occurred in several industries, led by professional and business services, construction, health care, and food services and drinking places. Mining employment continued to decline. The number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million, was essentially unchanged in December, and the unemployment rate was 5.0 percent for the third month in a row…Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for blacks declined to 8.3 percent in December, while the rates for adult men (4.7 percent), adult women (4.4 percent),teenagers (16.1 percent), whites (4.5 percent), Asians (4.0 percent), and Hispanics(6.3 percent) showed little or no change…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 2.1 million in December and accounted for 26.3 percent of the unemployed.The number of long-term unemployed has shown little movement since June…”

Digging deeper reveals troubling specifics.  As the New York Post noted,
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“… those numbers don’t reflect what is happening on the Main Streets of American. There, life is a lot tougher. For example, the broader measure of unemployment, called U-6, which measures Americans working in part-time jobs because they can’t find a 40-hour-a-week job, finds 6 million people, or 9.9 percent of the workforce, not able to find a full-time job…Plus, if you add in all the discouraged workers who want a job but have given up looking, the number of unemployed could reach 20 percent of the population. There were some other strange things in Friday’s glowing employment report. For instance, why did construction jobs increase by 45,000 last month? Labor says it had nothing to do with the unusually warm weather in most of the nation, but how could that not have had an impact? There were also 39,000 new health-care jobs, which was about average for every month in 2015. But most of these jobs are probably related to the continued rollout of ObamaCare. A change in the law like that has nothing to do with economic vitality. ..Another noticeable oddity in Friday’s report is this: “Food service and drinking places added 37,000 jobs in December,” Labor said. For 2015 there were 357,000 new jobs in this category. Really? How many new bars were added to your town?”

Dr. Paul C. Roberts, writing in Global Research,, is also harshly critical of the optimistic jobs picture. He notes that “the alleged job growth always takes place in non-tradable domestic services, that is, in areas that do not produce exports and have no competition from imports. This is the job profile of a Third World country…the US labor force participation rate has been declining. In December, 2015, there are 1,185,000 fewer Americans in the labor force than in December 2014; yet, the working age population is higher today than a year ago. The reported unemployment rate does not include “discouraged workers,” that is, workers who unable to find jobs have ceased looking for work. The reported unemployment rate of 5% only counts non-discouraged workers who are still expecting to find a job. The actual unemployment rate, that is, the rate that includes Americans who have given up hope of finding employment, is 23%… let’s look at the make believe jobs that the BLS claims. Almost all of them are in lowly paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, couriers and messengers, employment services, social services and health care (primarily ambulatory health care services).”

The New York Times provides this analysis: the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants. In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery… Higher-wage industries — like accounting and legal work — shed 3.6 million positions during the recession and have added only 2.6 million positions during the recovery. But lower-wage industries lost two million jobs, then added 3.8 million… With joblessness high and job gains concentrated in low-wage industries, hundreds of thousands of Americans have accepted positions that pay less than they used to make, in some cases, sliding out of the middle class and into the ranks of the working poor.

The Washington Times outlines another key employment issue: “Two-thirds of those who have found employment under President Obama are immigrants, both legal and illegal.”

The Obama Administration’s high corporate taxes, lax immigration policies, poor international trade policies, excessive regulations, environmental extremism and disincentives on hiring from programs such as the Affordable Care Act have devastated the middle income job market.

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White House policies continue to harm employment

The latest federal jobs report, again providing bad news for job seekers and the economy, raises a vital question: since the statistics clearly indicate that President Obama’s economic policies have failed, why has there been no change of course from the White House?

According to the Department of Labor, (DOL) very few jobs were created last month, significantly below already modest expectations. They were in fields that, for the most part, do little to revive an American economy apparently heading into recession, and they did not go to those most sorely in need, or do anything to assist the bedrock of the U.S., the middle class.

Among the dismal numbers:

“Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.7 percent),adult women, teenagers (16.3 percent), whites (4.4 percent), blacks (9.2 percent), Asians (3.6 percent), and Hispanics (6.4 percent) showed little or no change in September. The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks increased by 268,000 to 2.4 million in September, partially offsetting a decline in August. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.1 million in September and accounted for 26.6 percent of the unemployed. The civilian labor force participation rate declined to 62.4 percent in September; the rate had been 62.6 percent for the prior 3 months. The employment-population ratio edged down to 59.2 percent in September, after showing little movement for the first 8 months of the year.” In addition, hourly wages declined.  In a worrisome note, the August numbers were revised downward, something that generally happens only during a recession.

The American Enterprise Institute called the information a “worrying jobs report. Few jobs created, no pressure on wages and a slight increase in the long-term unemployed. Labor force participation declines even further.”

Breitbart notes that  “The number of Americans not in the labor force exceeded 94 million for the second time in a row last month hitting a new record high.”

Zerohedge.com  called the DOL report

“…a total disaster, 60K below the consensus and below the lowest estimate. Just as bad, the August print was also revised far lower from 173K to 136K. And while it is less followed, the household survey was an unmitigated disaster, with 236,000 jobs lost in September. Putting it into perspective, in 2015 job growth has averaged 198,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 260,000 in 2014. The recession is almost here…not only were workers paid less, they worked lessas the average hourly work week declined from 34.6 hours to 34.5, suggesting an imminent collapse in economic output.”

The Washington Examiner’s  review of the DOL report revealed that “For a third month in a row, native-born Americans saw their job numbers tumble while immigrants experience solid gains. According to the montly Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers just released, “foreign-born” jobs numbers increased by 14,000, while those for “native-born” Americans fell off a cliff, by 262,000. Over the past three months, the job numbers for native-born have dropped by nearly 1 million, exactly the number of jobs President Obama promised to add when he ran for re-election in 2012.”

Now in its seventh year of failure in attempts to turn the job market around, Americans are justifiably asking why President Obama continues to cling to policies that have clearly and significantly failed.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ian Murray  implicates the actions of the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board for at least some part of the depressed job picture. “Both bodies have made moves over the past few months that make flexible working arrangements difficult. Thereby, they have discouraged both businesses from hiring and workers who would prefer flexible arrangements from getting the working conditions they want. Examples include:

  • The Department of Labor’s interpretationof the Fair Labor Standards Act, which essentially says that most independent contractors have to be classified as employees, and therefore subject to a host of cost-increasing regulations.
  • The Department of Labor’s proposed overtime rule, which will significantly increase costs on businesses that promote from within if they wish to encourage aspirational staff to work longer hours. (The likelihoodis that hours will be cut instead.)
  • The National Labor Relations Board’s decisionon “joint employer” classification and its impending rulings on franchisesand contingent workers. These decisions threaten business models that sustain 5 million jobs across the U.S.

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With this regulatory onslaught ongoing, it should not be surprising that job growth has slowed (although there are clearly many other factors at work as well).”

The San Diego Tribune discusses the implications of hiring foreign workers through H-1B visas, allowing foreign workers to now compete on a larger scale for middle class jobs the same way they have competed for lower wage positions.

Both of those areas are important, but each plays only a singular role in the overall economic challenges imposed by a White House that, in the face of the worst economic climate in recent history, continues to overregulate, overtax, allows massive illegal immigration, pursues trade deals that don’t result in fairness for U.S. companies, and imposes uncertainty on American enterprises.

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The under-reported desperation of the American economy

Despite government reports that desperately attempt to put a positive spin on the latest figures and the low-key coverage of a largely partisan media, the United States economy is in terrible health. The Federal Reserve gimmick of keeping interest rates artificially low cannot hide this reality.

An objective reading of essential indicators is distressing:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta forecast for GDP growth in the first quarter has fluctuated between a horrible 0.1% and an even worse 0%.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s  latest balance of trade figure reports a record high trade deficit in February of $35.4 billion.

Bloomberg News reports that the “Institute for Supply Management ‘s Index declined to 51.5, the weakest since May 2013…the gauge has fallen five straight months.”

So, women must pay close attention to men’s health in the usual sildenafil super life, especially a man’s blood sugar levels. Its results come in light as stressfulness, depression, humiliation, irritability, relationship problems buying generic cialis and even much more. Prostate congestion viagra uk purchase is very common symptom for this disease. Another finding cialis generika was done by Case-control study at Columbia University Medical Center and New York has not voted for a Republican Presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984. Reuters notes that “U.S. private employers added the smallest number of workers in more than a year in March and factory activity hit a near two-year low, fresh signs that economic growth slowed in the first quarter [of 2015.]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that the number of those 16 years of age and older who didn’t participate in the labor market increased to an all-time high of 93,175,000 in March, and the number of long term unemployed accounted for 29.8% of the unemployed.

The standard White House response to poor—in this case terrible—economic news has been to point to the impact of the last recession.  Unfortunately, however, many of the downturns over the tenure of the current Administration have come from figures that had at least slightly improved since then, meaning that these troubling numbers are the results of its own mismanagement of the economy.

That mismanagement promises to provide future harmful effects as well. As outlined in the Daily Signal,  the federal debt has been hiked by 70% since the President took office, to a record $18 trillion-plus, with another $486 billion added in the past fiscal year despite record increases in revenue.

All of that record-setting deficit spending under the current White House produced  no gains for the U.S. economy, and provided no substantial assistance to the aging national infrastructure.  American national security has been weakened due to cuts in defense spending, and business start-ups continue to fall behind the number of business failures. The Brookings Institute found that business start-ups have reached a 30 year low.