About five weeks ago you’ll recall, the CBO announced that by 2017, ♡bamaCare!!!’s diktats would result in the loss of the equivalent of about 2.5 million American jobs. Then we had to endure a week of the Left spinning us about how that’s somehow a good thing. To that I say, spin this:
Most commentators viewed the February jobs report released on March 7 as good news, indicating that the labor market is on a favorable growth path. A more careful reading shows that employment actually fell—as it has in four out of the past six months and in more than one-third of the months during the past two years.
Although it is often overlooked, a key statistic for understanding the labor market is the length of the average workweek. Small changes in the average workweek imply large changes in total hours worked. The average workweek in the U.S. has fallen to 34.2 hours in February from 34.5 hours in September 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That decline, coupled with mediocre job creation, implies that the total hours of employment have decreased over the period.
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The decline in the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by 3/10ths of an hour—offset partially by the increase in the number of people working—means that real labor usage on net, taking into account hours worked, fell by the equivalent of 100,000 jobs since September.
It’s a conservative and libertarian premise that collectivization does little but to equalize misery — and here we see it in action. There are more people working, but less actual work is getting done. That’s lower productivity and that means smaller paychecks.
And if you think the competition is fierce now, just wait. We have less than three years before we’re due to lose the workhour equivalent of a further 2.4 million jobs — that’s an average of 72,000 jobs each month between now and 2017. Or to put it more starkly, that’s a loss of 720,000 work hours every single week.
That Means It’s Working™.
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