Originally posted by mikemike Where are they Mr. President?
The US would need to be adding 300K/month if we wanted to get down to 6% unemployment by putting people back to work in 3 years.
With every disappointing jobs number, the mass media reports the same thing. Then they interview an R (Obama's fault) and a D (Congress's fault) and on to a Kardashian story. I see a few more pieces to the puzzle:
Government jobs are jobs too, but state and local government jobs have been cut severly. All those R slogans about cutting waste, red tape and ineffiency translate into real job numbers, justified or not.
Job growth is not fast but it is the same as it was in the Bush administration, when any two guys with a pickup were house builders and hiring. Job growth looks a lot like housing too - extremely rare that prices/jobs have returned to historic levels but way better than the bottom. The domestic job decline has to be hugely related to the still-troubled housing market.
A business that is unrelated to housing probably is related to exports. Are there any other economies in the world in great shape? Even China slowed down, OK from like 14% to 8% but still. Europe is mostly terrible, with countries like Spain at 25% unemployment and everyone rethinking the euro concept. So exporting companies aren't going to be hiring either, until Obama or Congress fixes Europe (a joke).
But what do I know, I'm not a highly paid TV commentator.