At his press conference on Friday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tried make the case that the economy isn’t as bad as we all think.
I think if you look through and analyze some of the numbers, there are some bright spots which I think are at least encouraging, understanding that there are, as I said, millions of people that have lost their jobs and are hurting. If you take the average of what we were losing in the first quarter of 2009 — January, February, March — we were losing on average in those months 691,000 jobs a month.
If you take the average of what we’re losing the last three months of the year — October, November and December — that number is 69,000, one-tenth of that job loss. So that trend obviously is moving in the right direction. …
Interesting. The trend is moving in the right direction. Take a look at the following chart of the US employment to population ratio (basically the number of Americans employed in the US.) Via Ritholtz.com.
So, how are we moving in the right direction? It looks to me like we’re moving entirely in the wrong direction, despite the massive spending by Obama and Congress. Maybe my lack of a Harvard education is keeping me from seeing what the folks in the White House are seeing.
I’m not the only one who doesn’t seem to think we’re moving in the right direction. Even AP has noticed that the stimulus hasn’t helped the employment picture.
Ten months into President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.
[…]
Construction spending would be a key part of the Jobs for Main Street Act, a $75 billion second stimulus to revive the nation’s lethargic unemployment rate and improve the dismal job market for construction workers. The House approved the bill 217-212 last month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., worked the floor for an hour; the Senate is expected to consider it later in January.
AP’s analysis, which was reviewed by independent economists at five universities, showed that strategy hasn’t affected unemployment rates so far. And there’s concern it won’t work the second time. …
In response to the last stimulus failure, what are we going to get? More stimulus. More debt. More misery. If I were a cynic I’d think they know exactly what direction we’re moving, and in their minds it is the right direction. Oh, never mind.
Via memeorandum
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