The failed policies that got us into this mess: by the numbers

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Hot Air:

On the campaign trail, President Obama continues to frame the election as a choice between competing visions. Every time there is a glimmer of good news on the economic front, he recycles a paragraph written for him in 2009 and that he has repeated countless times since. “The recovery is accelerating,” he tells audiences at rallies and fundraisers. “America is coming back—which means the last thing we can do is go back to the same failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place. And that’s what’s at stake in this election.”

It’s a convenient dodge against having to address his own record, which he’d be hard-pressed to run on. This is why he cites the cumulative number of jobs added instead of the unemployment rate, which has been above 8% for 42 consecutive months. By avoiding this troubling metric, he is able to divert attention from his boast in early 2009 that unemployment would fall to 5.6% as a result of passing his $862 billion stimulus package.

Technically, the term unemployment rate (singular) in the previous paragraph is inaccurate. In point of fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recognizes and computes six separate unemployment rates each month. Each of the rates, known as U-1 through U-6, uses an increasingly detailed data set. The rate we are most accustomed to seeing is U-3, widely considered to be the “official” unemployment rate. It is the proportion of the civilian labor force that is unemployed but actively seeking employment.

The other rates are as follows:

U-1 : Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.

U-2 : Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.

U-4 : U-3 plus “discouraged workers,” people who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.

U-5 : U-4 plus other “loosely attached workers,” those who would like to work and are ablebodied but have not looked for work recently.

U-6 : U-5 plus part time workers who want to work full time but cannot due to economic reasons.

The U-6 is perhaps the most comprehensive measure of labor resource unemployment and hence the strongest indicator of economic vitality. It is the one Obama would never dare mention because the numbers suggest that he’s done a worse job handling the mess he inherited than his much-maligned predecessor.

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The legacy of Obamanomics.