Ding, Dong, the Obama ‘Recovery’ is D-E-A-D

Only 38,000 jobs were added to the economy during May, the Labor Department announced in a depressing jobs report, calling into question the strength and success of Obama’s so-called “recovery.”

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This sharp and unexpected decline was “considerably below both expectations and the pace of growth in recent months,” the White House conceded in a statement authored by Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The damning report will also likely put on hold any move by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates until at least the end of the summer.

Over 14 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama took office.

“At the same time, the unemployment rate fell from 5 percent to 4.7 percent in May, its lowest level since November 2007,” the White House boasted. But this 0.3 percent decline that the White House is so desperate to highlight as a positive is mainly the result of 458,000 people leaving the workforce last month.

Indeed, the decline in the unemployment rate throughout Obama’s presidency — a decline of which he often brags — has occurred almost entirely because people have removed themselves from the active workforce. While May saw 4.7 percent unemployment, it also saw nearly 95 million Americans out of work — the highest number on record. Over 14 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama took office.

Yet Obama had the audacity to claim just three days ago in Indiana that “by almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency.”

“We cut unemployment in half, years before a lot of economists thought we would,” he said. Despite what Obama would have the country believe, seeing half the unemployed give up their search for work is not the same as finding half of the unemployed jobs.

[lz_bulleted_list title=”May Jobs Report” source=”Bureau of Labor Statistics”]Only 25,000 private sector jobs added|94,708,000 Americans not looking for work|14,179,000 Americans left labor force since Obama took office[/lz_bulleted_list]

And after a closer look, the 38,000 jobs number is even more pathetic that it first appears. A full 13,000 of those jobs are government jobs — jobs that are an inherent drain on economic productivity as they do not create wealth.

Only 25,000 of those jobs were created in the private sector — the smallest increase in private-sector job growth since February 2010. Worse still, manufacturing, construction, and wholesale trade jobs — relatively good indicators of a truly healthy economy — have continued their steep declines.

Despite the positive spin from the Obama administration, the May jobs report is nothing sort of tragic. And of course the Obama administration would never let a good tragedy go to waste — so it is brazenly using May’s depressing statistics to call for more of the ideologically driven, top-down policies that will only stifle any real economic recovery.

“This month’s report is a reminder of the important work that remains to sustain faster growth in jobs and wages, including investing in infrastructure and job training, implementing high-standards trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and raising the minimum wage,” the White House statement asserted.

The truth, however, is that May’s report is a stark reminder of the absolute failure Obama’s presidency has been in terms of economic recovery and growth.