The unemployment rate when Barack Obama became President was 7.8%. Four years, four trillion wasted deficit dollars and thousands of federal regulatory pages later, the unemployment rate remains… 7.8%.
Moreover, the Labor Department reported this morning that we added a lackluster 155,000 new jobs last month, and the labor participation rate (the percentage of Americans actually in the workforce) showed no improvement and remains at a generational low of 63.6%. In fact, considering that the number of women working outside the home has increased during the past three decades, workforce participation is in that sense even more depressing.
By way of perspective, through good times and bad since World War II, unemployment has averaged 5%. And facing an even deeper recession, Ronald Reagan’s agenda of lower taxes and smaller government saw unemployment plummet from 10.4% on the date his tax cuts took effect to 7.0% two short years later, and continued its steady decline to 5% during his administration.
Accordingly, this morning’s unemployment report confirms the “New Normal” under Obama and his wasteful policies.
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