Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich focuses attention in his latest Human Events column on the latest federal jobs report:
The numbers from last week?s report on job creation were truly
sobering.In April, the private sector added 218,000 jobs.
In May, the private sector added only 41,000 jobs. That is exactly the opposite pattern from a normal economic recovery.
Normally, in the depths of a severe recession, the recovery accelerates month by month as confidence recovers, businesses invest and consumers come back into the market.
The shocking numbers for May (an over 80% decline in new private-sector job creation) combined with the fallout from the European fiscal crisis and the economic costs of the BP-Obama oil disaster in the Gulf will further slow down the economy.
These indicators suggest that there is a real danger of a second downward leg in the recession.
The fact is that of 431,000 nonfarm jobs added in May, 412,000 are temporary government jobs for the 2010 census, whose layoff in the fall will send unemployment rates up. Furthermore, the unemployment rate came down from 9.9% to 9.7% only because 322,000 Americans dropped out of the job market and quit looking for work.
Amazingly, the President actually adopted the position that these dismal economic numbers were encouraging, saying ?The economy?s getting stronger by the day,? and a sign his policies are working.
The President is either being willfully dishonest or is ideologically blind to reality, seeing no difference between stable private-sector jobs and temporary government jobs.
