Lloyd Lofthouse

Reuters reported, “Jobs growth slowed sharply in August, setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to pump additional money into the sluggish economy next week and dealing a blow to President Barack Obama as he seeks re-election.”

This report from Reuters is very misleading as you will discover in this three part series. It all depends on how the reporter spins the numbers.

Let me explain.

Nonfarm payrolls increased (new jobs) only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, but in August 2012, there were 142,101,000 civilians working in the labor force while 12,544,000 were unemployed (an 8.1% unemployment rate). In addition, seven-million were job losers or persons who completed temporary jobs.

Another nine-hundred-and-forty-two thousand were labeled as lob leavers (they quit or retired).

What about the people that quit a job or retired and are being replaced—replacing people that quit or retire does not show as an increase in jobs because that job already existed and it isn’t a new job—it is an old job.

To make sense of all this, we will travel back in time to 2008.

In August 2011, there were 139,869,000 employed Americans working in the civilian labor force compared to 13,747,000 unemployed (an 8.9% unemployment rate).

In 2010, the civilian labor force was 139,064,000 and 14,825,000 were unemployed (9.6%).

In 2009, 139,877,000 civilians were employed and 14,265,000 were unemployed (9.3%).

In 2008, President G. W. Bush’s last full year in office and the year the global financial disaster exploded, 145,362,000 civilians were employed while 8,924,000 were unemployed (5.8%).

Now, let’s reverse the clock and move forward again:

By the end of 2009, 5.5 million civilian jobs were lost.

By the end of 2010, only 813,000 jobs were lost.

However, by the end of 2011, 805,000 jobs were added back to the civilian labor force and in one month, August 2012, 96,000 new jobs were created.

Even if new job creation stayed at the same rate as August, it means adding 1.15 million new jobs for 2012—another increase for the second year in a row, but 243,000 new jobs were added in January 2012; February saw a job gain of 227,000; March saw 120,000 new jobs; April added 115,000; May 69,000; June 80,000, and July 163,000.

ADD IT UP: For the first eight months of 2012, 1.113 million new jobs were added.

Someone that is stupid and/or ignorant will point at 2009, the year 5.5 million jobs were lost, the year President Obama was sworn into office, and claim, “Look what happened after he became president.  It is all his fault.”

NO, IT ISN’T!

The fact is that the 2009 budget, the financial disaster and the labor climate in the United States was inherited from President G. W. Bush. President Obama’s first budget was approved by Congress in 2010 and his stimulus package to create jobs still has not been totally implemented (and in some cases Republicans in Congress have blocked some of President Obama’s job stimulus plans). In fact, programs of this size are often phased in over several years. We will not see the results of much of what President Obama started until his second term. If he isn’t elected, any results we see in 2013 will be his—not the GOP presidential candidate.

Continued on September 8, 2012 in Jobs: Digging for FACTS – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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