AP: Job Market Slowed in March

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the employment numbers for March today, but as news reports suggest the numbers are again disappointing. The Wall Street Journal writes, “U.S. job growth slowed in March, and the labor force shrank, signaling that the economy could be losing momentum. Jobs outside of agriculture grew by 120,000 last month—half the number that the economy added the prior month—the Labor Department said Friday, marking the first time since November that job growth fell below 200,000.” And the AP reports, “The job market slowed in March as companies hit the brakes on hiring amid uncertainty about the economy's growth prospects. The unemployment rate dipped, but mostly because more Americans stopped looking for work.”

With today’s news, it’s worth recalling what Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration promised when they passed their nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill three years ago. Former White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein predicted that the unemployment rate with the stimulus bill would not exceed 8%. Yet the unemployment rate has been above 8% for over 36 months now. Shortly after President Obama signed the stimulus, Vice President Joe Biden boasted that the stimulus “literally drop-kicks us out of this recession” by, he claimed, creating “3.5 million jobs” in “18 months.”

Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson responded to the released March unemployment rate report: "Obama's U.S. Department of Labor loses more credibility every month as they announced a lower unemployment rate in March, while at the same time 31,000 fewer Americans actually had jobs than the previous month. In spite of all the happy talk out of Obama's official Washington, D.C., the fact is that fewer Americans were working last month than the previous one. That is not a recovery, it is an economic disaster for millions of families. The fact is, since Obama took office 4.683 million people have dropped out of the labor force. If they were included in today's unemployment report, the jobless rate would be 10.8 percent, and the underemployed rate 17 percent. All together 27.1 million Americans cannot find full-time work in the Obama economy."

Rick Manning, former Public Affairs Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Labor, noted on a NetRighhtDaily, " While Obama claims an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent, the real unemployment rate is 10.8 percent. Because ultimately, Obama’s unemployment rate decreases are the perverse result of the destruction of American’s hope of finding work and their abandoning the workforce."

President Obama’s expensive regulations, constant calls for tax increases, and his byzantine and unpopular health care law are all making it harder and more expensive to create private sector jobs in the United States. This country can do better.  But the administration just calls it "ups and downs" verses facing the truth that his policies are causing a serous shrinkage in the labor force.

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Tags: BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, job numbers, jobs, unemployed, underemployed, Obama administration, negative policies To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!