The White House is touting last week's drop in unemployment claims as a testament to the "success" of President Barack Obama's $787 billion "emergency" stimulus package passed a year ago this month. The real reason for the dip in claims, however, might have more to do with the weather than with the stimulus.
Jobless numbers released today show that unemployment claims fell by 43,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 440,000. Unfortunately, the impact of the snowstorm that hit much of the northern US on Friday apparently hasn't been factored into the Obama administration's equation. The storm's impact, and the likely preparations made in advance of it by unemployed people in affected areas, may account for the anomalous difference between anticipated jobless claims and actual jobless claims.
Meanwhile, the administration has apparently peered into its crystal ball and is predicting that the U.S. economy will average an increase of 95,000 jobs per month by the end of the year.
We can only hope CNN's "truth squad" will be on top of that come December.
Some of my liberal friends have wondered why I'm so hard on the president given his recent attentiveness to job creation. They misinterpret my criticism to mean that I'm not pleased to see the president focusing on jobs. In fact, I am pleased to see this administration focusing on this major economic indicator -- I only wish it had come sooner ... and in the right way
The reality is that if Obama had focused on job growth well in advance of December 2009, it is entirely possible that the unemployment rate wouldn't have topped 10 percent by the end of the year. For all his recent concern about the national deficit, he could have headed it off by focusing on creating incentives for small businesses that would result in the need for additional workers.
One major reason the federal government is running in the red is the refusal by Congressional Democrats and the White House to take job losses seriously. They passed the stimulus package and then moved on to other things, putting unemployment in the "completed" bin. Trouble is, chronic unemployment requires rapt attention to detail and constant monitoring. They payoff isn't just seen in gross domestic product. A full-time, permanently employed thriving work force is a major source of income for federal, state and local governments. With millions out of work, the government is losing billions in income taxes. And rather than collecting revenue from these unemployed workers, the government is now paying them to look for work that is no longer available.
Of the 95,000 montly new jobs the president is predicting his administration will create, the crystal ball hasn't told him how many would be permanent ... only that they are "payroll" jobs ... which essentially means nothing. After all, temporary workers are often put on the same payroll as permanent workers.
Next week will be huge for the Obama administration. Expect unemployment claims to dip dramatically. This won't be because fewer people have been laid off; it will be because the second storm to hit North America in less than a week prevented many Americans filing online jobless claims because of power outages or filing claims at the unemployment office because they were helplessly snowed in.
Hopefully, Wall Street won't take the drop in claims too seriously, because if it does, the let-down could be big when the numbers finally realign themselves in the final week of February.
Join Me on Facebook | Get My Twitter Updates 
Photo © Image Source/Getty Images
Comments
Great Post
Who are these people who predict 95,000 extra jobs a month.
For a start that is just a thimble in a bucket.
Secondly what reason do they give for the jobs ?
States and Cities are now laying off teachers and police !
More jobs are being outsourced ? (oseas)
They would like 95,000 jobs a month
They hope that 95,000 jobs a month will come.
But where is the evidence ?
And I notice that any major job creation announcement is always as a result of a major tax credit or subsidy !
I think until the US stops importing so much stuff jobs will continue to be lost.
Every month our government lets in 75,000 permanent foreign workers via “green cards” and 50,000 temporary workers through numerous guest worker programs. That’s 1.5 million new foreign workers each year. Then
add all the illegal aliens flooding across our open borders. Every one of those new arrivals is competing with American citizens for jobs –
and contrary to the propaganda of the open borders lobby, they are not taking only “jobs Americans won’t do.”
Last month, the Census Bureau data showed one out of six people in the American workforce is foreign born. That’s the highest figure since the 1920s and over three times as high as it was in 1965,
when our immigration system was overhauled by the then-junior senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy.
When our economy was growing, these figures were easy to ignore, but with 25 million Americans out of work, it is insane to continue these policies. Yet, few members of Congress in either party are willing to discuss reducing legal immigration to safeguard American
jobs.
While I applaud immigrants who arrive legally, who want to assimilate and become Americans, our immigration policy needs to put
the interest of the American economy and American citizens first. And
with so many Americans out of work and millions of legal immigrants
already in the work force, we need a three-year timeout on legal
immigration as well as secure borders to halt illegal immigration.