9.6 percent
Back in June, President Obama kicked off Democrats’ “recovery summer” with a crew of hard-hat workers in Ohio. With Friday’s announcement that unemployment edged up to 9.6 percent in August as the economy shed 54,000 more non-farm jobs, “recovery summer” might be the worst slogan since “Mission Accomplished.” Obama and his allies will continue claiming their stimulus package has things moving in the right direction, but the jobs figures say otherwise. Officials said although the private sector added 67,000 jobs last month, it was more than offset by 121,000 lost jobs on the government side. The White House and top congressional Democrats no doubt will see sunshine in the private-sector gains, but officials said the government losses were more than just Census jobs ending. State and local governments are trimming payrolls — and a lost job is a lost job. Overall, the U.S. economy has lost jobs three straight months now — and the November mid-term elections are less than two months away.
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Nice try Mark. The Job Report for August showed -54,000 net job loss, however private sector employment was +67,000.
“Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unemployment rate was
about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government
employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work.
Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000)”.
Unlike what you state only 7,000 government sector jobs were lost.
The Census always present statistical anomolies. Massive net job gains in April and May when over 500,000 temporary census workers were hired. June, July and August always lose over 100,000 census workers per month as their temporary work assignments are completed. At the end of August 88,000 temporary workers were still on the federal payroll and virtually all of them will be taken off the federal payroll in September, the last month this statistical anomoliewill mask true job gains. Natually the DOK, Fox news an Republicans will feign shock, claiming te sky is falling, we are headed for a double dip recession, where are the jobs and its all Obama’s fault.
The stimulus is working, on track to create one million net jobs this year.