April’s jobs numbers are out, and they are mixed. US payrolls rose by 115, 000 jobs, the weakest rise in six months. Unemployment still dropped a tenth of a point, to 8.1%, a drop attributable to the number of Americans giving up and dropping out of the job market altogether. The participation rate dropped to its lowest in more than 30 years, with just 63.6 percent of US adults working in the economy.
Reacting to the numbers, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the report is “terrible” and “disappointing.” Romney added that the US economy needs to be growing by about 500,000 jobs, more than four times the actual number. Romney said that the weak employment numbers show that the president’s policies are not working, and are contributing to the longest period of high unemployment Americans have seen in our lifetimes. Romney said that regardless of the drop in the unemployment figure, Americans know that they are not better off than they were three and one -half years ago.
More: The participation rate statistic bears some repetition and explanation. Obama’s figure, 63.6 percent, is the worst since 1981. That was the first year of the Reagan presidency, and Ronald Reagan had come into office inheriting Jimmy Carter’s stagnant economy. By 1984, the US economy was back in full swing and Reagan was re-elected in a 49-state landslide. Reagan engineered the US economy’s longest post-war growth period.
By contrast, Obama is nearing the end of his term. There is no boom now or on the horizon. The economy has not really improved. It certainly is not poised to repeat the performance of the Reagan economy; far from it. It is not morning again in America, as it was in 1984.
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