The jobs picture is worse than you think, Biden still smilin'

Here’s an oldie but a goodie from Joey and the Bidens:

“All in all we’re going to be creating somewhere between 100[,000] and 200,000 jobs next month, I predict,” Biden said, according to a pool report, adding that he “got in trouble” for a job growth prediction last month. “Even some in the White House said, ‘Hey, don’t get ahead of yourself.’ Well, I’m here to tell you, some time in the next couple of months, we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month.”

That was April of last year. In all of 2010, the US economy added only 812,000 jobs — or about six-to-twelve weeks worth of Biden Boosterism. Or maybe as low as 500,000, depending on if the bigger number reflects the recent “downward revision.”

From there, things get worse. First, a little more from Biden:

“We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down,” Biden added. “We’re going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up.”

Uh-huh. But if you drill down into the BLS’s numbers, you’ll find the underemployment rate (“total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons”) was a staggering 16.7% last quarter. That’s up from an average of 16.2% in 2009. In California — home to all those fancy green jobs — the rate is over 22%. More than one in five people can’t find a job, or simply enough work, in one of the most lavishly government-funded states in the union.

That’s some “break.” That’s some “planning.”