Modest? Mediocre? Employment Numbers Disappoint

I suppose the good news in today’s employment report from the government is that the economy added 151,000 new jobs in October. That’s obviously better than losing jobs. But it was insufficient for the unemployment rate to decline, and so it remains stuck at an ugly 9.6%.

The improvement in job creation we saw at the beginning of then year vaporized as soon as the government started firing all those census workers. The underlying private economy is simply moving sideways and there is no sign of acceleration. Indeed the October increase in jobs failed to keep pace with our population growth, so the backlog of unemployed and discouraged workers is building. At that rate of job creation the unemployment rate might even increase over the winter.

I cannot think of a more striking indictment of the Administration and Congress. The policies thus far used to combat the malaise have been both weak and small scale. They reflect a limited ambition and defeatist attitude.

So be it. I am tired of making critical comments. Failure is annoying when there were so many of us warning of the consequences of those policies.

What worries me most is that the new Congress has absolutely no new ideas. So the poor and unemployed are likely to suffer much longer than they ought. For that I hold Obama accountable.