Obama blames high unemployment on government sector layoffs
We either have an out-of-touch economic illiterate or a bald faced liar in the presidency. Or both, I guess.
CBS’s Mark Knoller, covering a town hall on the economy with the president this morning, reports: “President Obama blames high unemployment rate on ‘huge layoffs of government workers’ at federal, state and local levels.”
This is completely wrong. Extremely and mind-bogglingly wrong. Epically wrong.
And Jim Geraghty, who wrote that post, goes into a look at employment trends over the past few years. He finds that government sector employment has been steady to increasing over the years, while the recession has killed of a massive number of private sector jobs. Here, for instance, are the government sector numbers since 2007.
June 2007: 22,176,000.
January 2009: 22,471,000.
January 2010: 22,376,000.
April 2011: 22,594,000 (preliminary).
Steady. And actually, a modest increase over the past four years. Meanwhile, the private sector has lost about 8 million jobs over the same time span. Gallup even found that government sector job growth is outpacing private sector job growth right now. That’s not because government is better, it’s just bigger, thanks in no small part to Obama’s own policies.
Once again, President Obama shows where his heart is: Government largesse, not private enterprise. He consistently attacks the latter while growing and promoting the former.
One does not need to tell the truth when one knows the press will not question what one says.
When I was going through training after my layoff, the company performing the training said – “the government is hiring lots of workers”. Recession, high unemployment, yet the government was hiring? Why was my question.
“We either have an out-of-touch economic illiterate or a bald faced liar in the presidency. Or both, I guess.”
or a marxist ideologue
or a cynical finger-waving nose-scratching charlatan front-man baghdad-bob
or the real answer…all of the above
The high unemployment in the oil industry and cost of gasoline is directly influenced by Obama’s ban on drilling. Oh yes, and the ethanol subsidy increases fuel costs and it increases the cost of food directly and through shipping costs. Thanks, Obama.
Just an announcement that we are streamlining the permit process and opening up the coasts and ANWR to drilling would lower oil prices. And create a boatload of jobs if he actually did it.
Since he’s interested in collapsing not saving the economy, he’s doing the opposite of what’s good for America.
Treason at the highest levels of Government.
In Obama’s mind, his statement makes sense because the reality is he thinks we all work for him.
Actually, Obama is telling the truth in part. At the State and local levels, the government HAS been laying off workers, because they cannot print their own money. Many of them are required to balance their budgets.
However, here is what the real lying part is. The federal government has been hiring… a lot! Obama has been hiring, in other words. The net increase is because of the VASTLY growing federal government. The States and local governments are actually shrinking. The federal government is not. It is WAY out of control.
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” – (Unknown)
You nailed it! And most States have a long ways to go in layoffs…at least those states that have any smarts. The fedral boys still have a lot of hiring left to do as the Health care acts gets implemented with those three thousand new agencies and IRS staffing legislated for. Then, folks are forgetting also, that when the wars wind down and with further defense cuts, thousands upon thousands of private sector contract jobs are going to be lost. The cattle trail up yonder is not going to be very pretty!
if all those federal workers are out of a public job then they get a private sector job (even starting at minimum wage) what are the numbers then?
very rough and vague pseudo calcs:
22.5 million times $50k = $1.125 trillion savings for taxpayer
22.5 million times ($8 min wage for a year at 50hrs week)= $432 billion injected into economy
now these are the kinds of numbers that i like to look at!
Do you think that the money spent in the economy by government employees is not injecting money into the economy?
You don’t think that the loss of spending power by the 39,000 government employees laid off in June might lower their spending plans just a little bit?
You don’t think that this loss in consumer demand might influence private companies to forgo opening new factories when they already have factories sitting idle due to lack of demand?
When you put two and two together, what number do you come up with?
To be completely clear, O was talking about layoffs that have occurred in recent months, not over many years. It could be possible that there was a hiring spree, for example to fulfill stimulus projects, and then those people were laid off when the projects came to an end. This would result in O being correct and also fit with the statistics you cite. There was a huge spike in federal employment around the end of 2010 and a huge decline since. Seems to me that this is another case of someone cherrypicking data.
It is neat how you choose which job numbers to quote so that you can mask the fact that there were net 39,000 public sector job cuts in June.
The Republicans think that government job cuts are good. Is this true even when the 39,000 cuts almost completely negates the 57,000 hires in the private sector?
Of course state and local government cut backs also mean job losses in the private sector that supplies services to the government. I don’t know how much this cut into the private sector job gains.