By Adam Bitely
This was supposed to be the summer that Americans would finally face the long promised jobs recovery, according to the Obama administration. However, it looks like the summer of 2010 go down in the history books as the recovery that wasn’t.
In a June 17th report to Obama from Joe Biden, Biden lays out the activities of the “Summer of Recovery”. This report was vague at best. Noticeably lacking in the report was any hard numbers on expected job creation—a key part to the recovery of the economy.
Oddly, the recovery summer fact sheet claims that the impact from the Recovery Act will continue to climb through the end of the year, aided by the “Recovery Summer” projects. However, the predictions outlined in this “fact sheet” fall far short of reality.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 142,221,000 employed Americans in January of 2009 and as of July 31st, 2010, there are 138,960,000 Americans employed. That is a net loss of 3,261,000 employed Americans—an amazing fall in employment over the course of a year and a half!
But if you look to Biden’s report on “Recovery Summer”, he claims that the Obama administration plans to create 3.5 million jobs by December 31st, 2010. Compare Biden’s estimate to the trend on the above graph, and what you’ll see is quite different. In fact, it appears that the “recovery” stalled and even began to fall backwards by May of 2010—hardly a good sign of a “Recovery Summer”.
Even further, a quick examination of the now all-too common lingo from the Obama administration when they spin their job creation estimates is important to pay close attention to. Far too often they push the “jobs created or saved” line, which amounts to, “we have no idea if what we did resulted in any positive change to the employment situation for Americans.”
Economist Veronique De Rugy points out the myth behind the “created or saved” exclamations from the Obama administration in the below chart:
As you can see, even where jobs were “created or saved”, the jobs that were lost far offset the administrations’ flashy press releases claiming otherwise. The fact of the matter is that jobs are not being created or saved, jobs are being lost.
The “Sumer of Recovery” theme that the White House pushed in June has fizzled. Americans realize that the jobs are not coming. And if the Obama administration thinks that they can keep telling the American people that they are spending their taxpayer dollars to save their jobs, they will need some hard evidence to back up such claims. To date, no such evidence exists.
As “Recovery Summer” comes to a close, it is important to remember what has happened. More Americans are out of work now than before the summer “recovery” season began.
ALG Editor’s Note: Read more on the Recovery Summer Exposed here.
Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com.
