Today's employment numbers were pathetic -- 115,000 new jobs. After a revision upward of 50,000 for prior months, the net-net is about 165,000 new jobs. That won't keep pace with population growth. The rate of unemployment fell from 8.2 % to 8.1 % only because more than 300,000 people simply gave up looking for work in April, reducing both the numerator and the denominator, causing the ratio to drop.
The key to the drop in the unemployment rate over the past two years is mainly that an extraordinarily large number of people no longer believe they can find jobs in the Obama economy. They are probably right.
These numbers are the predictable outcome of a misguided and punitive economic policy that seems to have as its goal the paralysis of the US economy. They are succeeding.
