The CBO writes that America’s unemployment rate has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making this the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression. To make matters worse, unemployment will remain above 8 percent until 2014. And the level of long-term unemployment — those looking for work for more than six months — is over 40 percent, the highest since at least 1948, when that data was first collected.
“But wait a minute!” you might shout, “There are jobs being created; we’re on the road to recovery.” True enough. The White House brags that 257,000 jobs were created in January and that the economy has added private sector jobs for 23 straight months. While those are good numbers, bear in mind that in this case, the beauty of the Obama economy is only skin deep and that lead has not quite been turned into gold. In fact, the strength of the U.S. economy’s recovery is much weaker than advertised. And though the President would like to credit his stimulus with today’s growth, keep in mind that the stimulus ended one year ago. Obamanomics would have predicted faster growth sooner, not later, and certainly not after the stimulus wound down.
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