Economic Evisceration

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Feeble Job Numbers Show Recovery Starting to Stall,” delivers devastating news for the Obama administration and could significantly imperil his reelection. The unemployment rate for June ticked upward to 9.2 percent, defying economists’ predictions, with leading indicators signaling problems for future months as well.

These indicators such as temporary hiring and average hourly work week generally rise before employers hire new staff — they try to supplement labor hours per these two methods first. Both actually declined in June.

Of course, Republicans were quick to tout the numbers as a sign of failure by the Obama administration, but one wonders how much any government could do with an economy as large and unwieldly as the United States, one led by its own internal dynamics.

It’s not totally clear to me, but it seems like everyone says that the main engine driving the economy is consumer demand, and as long as so many people are unemployed, that engine will remain stalled. Thus, our real economic problem is not deficit and the debt, or the status of “job creators,” as many Republicans claim. We need a jobs bill and economic stimulus to get us going again, the opposite of what the Republicans are touting.