Obama's Final Jobs Report Is A Fitting End To His Presidency

Obamanomics: The last jobs report of President Obama's presidency came out on Friday. What it says about his economic performance can be summed up in one word: Lackluster.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the economy created a modest 156,000 new jobs in December, while the unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 4.7%.

Reuters, however, took this news as evidence that the economy is nearing full employment, and the White House boasted that it marks the 75th consecutive month of job growth — "more than two years longer than the next-longest streak." The current unemployment rate is as low as it was just before the recession hit.

But look at the job market in the proper context, and Obama's record is pretty dismal...

...question going forward is whether this sluggish job growth is a permanent fixture of the economy, or whether it's the result of bad public policy.

Our view has consistently been that the economic recovery from the Great Recession could have been — and should have been — very robust. And that the only reason it wasn't is growth-choking policies imposed by Obama: Dodd-Frank, ObamaCare, tax hikes, huge new regulatory burdens.

If Trump manages to turn these policies around, we have no doubt that the days of mediocre job growth will be a thing of the past.

In my area (northeastern NJ/NYC metro area) 2007/08 was bad; very real job losses as NYC basically lost many of its financial sector jobs (and that impact rippled through local economies with foreclosures and such). Couple that with a horrible candidate like McCain and Obama was a shoe-in (anyone would have been).

2012 was a frightening indication of the enemedia’s strength, as the proven failure Otoken was re-elected. Again, in my area things never recovered (and still haven’t).

2016 showed (as you point out) that Trump learned how to beat the same media that dragged Otoken to a second term; it was impossible to hide the economic stagnation, and nobody believed there was anything the Dems would do to fix things. They were too busy pretending everything was fine...

Thanks (and I’m not an economist; it’s been forever since even my basic economics course). I was just quoting the page, which isn’t the formula you cited, but

“Calculated as the ratio of quarterly nominal GDP
(https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP) to the quarterly average of M2 money stock.”

Since, as you noted in your original, they’re printing money by the bucketloads, of course GDP/M2 will decrease; intuitively to me that says that while whatever $ are flying about might not be recessionary, the real world IS because each $ is worth that much less in real wealth.

Here’s a major problem with the jobs situation.

We have approximately 350,000 people turning 21 each and every month.

This means that in the age range of 18 to say 25, we have 33,600,000 new potential workers.

I address it this way because some try to enter the workforce at 18 (or even before) and others are potential new workers at another point in the eight year period.

When another 150,000 people enter the workforce in a certain month, it sounds great. The fact is, it is terrible. It means 200,000 more potential workers didn’t find work that month. Our out of work numbers go up. In a year that’s 2,400,000 people

There is a new potential workforce of 33,600,000 people who could enter the workforce in that eight year period. Right now we are only adding about 14,400,000 during the eight years. This means we are adding 19,200,000 to our non-working worker rolls.

Think of the new families not being started. Think of the new homes not being bought. Thinks of the children not being born. Think of the potential tax receipts not materializing.

This 150,000 figure each month, is symptomatic of a very sick situation.

In 16 years, just a little over a decade and a half, we’re talking about another 38,400,000 idle workers.

We are only putting to work 42.85% of our new potential workforce members. We are not putting to work 57.15% of our potential new workers every 16 years.

Each month, 57.15% of our potential new workers are added to the body of people in this nation were are able to work, but are not employed.

This doesn’t even touch the underemployed and part-timers who are classified as employed.

This is closer to a Potter’s field than anything else.

This is just plain dismal. It’s a national disgrace what has taken place over the last 16 years.

I do have a little advantage: I taught this stuff for 30 years at several universities. The quote you gave:

“Calculated as the ratio of quarterly nominal GDP
(https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP) to the quarterly average of M2 money stock.”

is actually the same, since the output of an economy is Q which is sold at some average price (or price level) P. Velocity is actually the number of times the money supply must work its way through the economic system to buy that output (i.e., V * M). Hence my original equation PQ = MV. Therefore:

V = P * Q / M

Or V = GDP / M

which is what your quote says. While some argue for using M1 for M above, your quote choose to include near money, or M2.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.