Story here.
What's next, 911 really was an inside job? Paul McCartney did die?
To believe this number you have to believe all the numbers reported all the time by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have been wrong for 4.5 years and that everyone who works there is content to keep a secret, and can, but I'll bet you those are precisely the numbers House Ways and Means have been "crunching" to arrive at the "truth".
I realize John Crudele at The New York Post is fond of that skeptical pose now that a former BLS official has been talking to him about his skepticism about the numbers, but really, have we all gone off the deep end in order to drive home a political point about what ObamaCare is going to do to the nature of work in America when it's not really yet self-evident? For example, average hourly earnings should be plummeting if Ways and Means is right, but they are not. Wages are up nearly 1.9% in the last year. Nothing to write home about, but completely dispositive of the thesis.
As usual the devil is in the details, which in this case means the word "net", as in net total. Well, net from what benchmark? The all-time high of full-time at 123.219 million under George Bush? Full-time isn't anywhere near recovering to that level, so it's impossible that for the Republicans net means net above the all-time high by the paltry sum of 270,000, as in 123.489 million full-time jobs. Would that the Republicans were right!
Alas, they are not. Usually full-time is presently 117.688 million, 3.873 million above the January 2009 level when Obama took office, not 0.270 million above the January 2009 level. That's the nominal number. Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives could run the population-adjusted figures for us to show us just how far behind we really are in recovering to trendline at the Bush peak. Population has continued to grow causing employment-population ratios to plummet and labor participation rates to tank under truly dismal GDP conditions, so there is value in looking at it from that perspective. It's true. Obama is a total failure at job creation. When he turns his gaze to them, they seem to vaporize. Rush Limbaugh thinks this is on purpose.
Meanwhile the numbers continue to improve because this is a giant capitalist ship with tremendous inertia whose communist captain can't turn her on a dime for another go at the iceberg. He wishes we were China, but we aren't.
God bless the Republican House, but get off the number-of-angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff. It's August, and we have gin to drink.
