95% of new jobs from Census hiring

By Ed Lasky

The Labor Department released sobering news this morning. Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month. That may sound good on the surface, but is far less than the median forecast of 536,000 jobs. But it gets worse: of the 431,000 jobs, 411,000 of them were census workers. Those are government jobs, not private sector jobs -- and are temporary. That means the private sector hired a mere 41,000 more workers in the past month. The unemployment rate fell a bit -- but only because of the way that figure is calculated. The unemployment rate only measures those people seeking work. If people give up hope (and remember Obama's campaign was all about "Hope" and "Yes We can") they drop out of the labor force and are not included in the unemployment rate.

Two days ago, Barack Obama said that he thought there would be good news on Friday when then employment were released. I suppose if, like Obama, a person only looks at government payrolls as a measure of an economy's health, that would be good news (since there are so many census workers).

Of course, this figure again illustrates (as all unemployment figures have over the last 16 months) that the drop in unemployment we were promised by Barack Obama and the Democrats (to 8%) when TARP was rushed into being has been a broken promise. One of many that can be chalked up to Barack Obama and his Democratic minions.

Now we have the worst of all worlds -- a massive deficit and debt because of TARP that will be a drag on our nation's growth for many years to come, a despairing work force, and massive unemployment among teens that will affect their future employability.

Maybe if Barack Obama and the Democrats would enact pro-growth measures and stop demonizing private enterprise, stop erecting a regulatory regime that strangles business, abolish their healthcare reform bill that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to our deficit, stop taxing us to penury, stop rewarding union allies at the expense of entrepreneurs, maybe... maybe we might get the engines of our economy moving again.

The cap-and-tax bill won't help matters as businesses contemplate the steep rise in energy costs facing them if that monstrosity comes to pass. These sorts of schemes have helped sink the European economies, the California economy -- and economies around the world who are now engaged in crash programs to tend them (see Spain's about-face).

Meanwhile, blind to reality but beholden to an ideology (and political allies in the green energy movement who are earning billions from government programs) Obama goes full steam ahead into disaster.

This number will not help Democrats come Election Day.

No wonder Mr. Yes We Can delivered his own malaise speech a couple days ago where he spoke of the "feeling of not being in control of your own economic future -- that sense that the American dream might be slowly slipping away"

That is his own political epitaph. And that of his fellow Democrats come November.