Jobs, Jobs, Jobs or Talk, Talk, Talk?

The new unemployment numbers were released Friday. There were 160,000 people hired in March. Democrats lined up to take credit for the tremendous news.  The president was the first to grab a microphone. The fact that the unemployment rate remains at 9.7% went unmentioned. Another fact not announced by the administration is that 48,000 of those newly employed were temporary census takers hired by the government. Government employees are part of the overhead, not part of the solution. Census work is short term.

The president said, “All of us know how important work is -- not just for the paycheck, but for the peace of mind that comes with knowing you can provide for your family.” He has a remarkable grasp for the obvious. He went on to say, “Given that, it is heartening to learn that the U.S. economy is starting to create jobs, rather than losing them.”  That’s his opinion but not necessarily true.

"We have begun to reverse the devastating slide,” he bragged, “but we have a long way to go to repair the damage from this recession, and that will continue to be my focus every single day."  My ears perked up when he said, “We.”  The fact is, in any recession there is a bottom to unemployment—a point where businesses and industry cannot lay off any more people without closing their doors. It’s usually uphill from there. It’s not unusual for politicians to jump in at that point and pat themselves on the back for reaching rock bottom. Saying “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” isn’t the same thing as actually doing anything to solve the unemployment problem. The recession must end in order for any serious hiring to take place.

Since 1919, the average length of a recession has been 13 months. This one officially started in 2008 and the end is not yet known. Employment is called a lagging indicator, meaning it hangs around after everything else turns around.

Despite what the president is saying about unemployment and how hard he is working to fix it—between trips overseas and destroying our health care system, there isn’t much any president can do about unemployment in a positive way. But he can have a definite negative impact on job numbers.

Creating uncertainty is what has been prolonging the current recession. A business isn’t going to expand or hire people unless it has some idea of what things are going to be like in the future. The business community needs to be reassured, not scared to death. Otherwise they are going to sit on their capital and wait it out.

The fact that the president and those in his administration either don’t understand or don’t care how business works is more than enough to keep those managing everything from a small town muffler shop to a Fortune 500 corporation from making business decisions that will help bring the economy out of this recession.

As long as the president appears to be more interested in creating another European socialist country through government takeovers and spending our money--money that has been borrowed from China and Japan, on entitlement schemes for the perpetually poor and parasites, I don’t see an early end to the recession.

As long as business is afraid of more and more tax increases to finance the president’s grandiose FDR-like programs, recovery is going to be slow. The economy will recover, it always does, but it will be in spite of the federal government, not because of it.  When the economy recovers and the recession is over, expect to see Mr. Obama leap to the podium, with his twin teleprompters to his left and right, proclaiming how “We” ended the recession and “We” were responsible for all the “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” Of course the real We (that’s us) will understand that it is just so much “Talk, talk, talk.”