A Graphic Question: Where Are The Jobs?

Washington, Feb 16 - Tomorrow, February 17, 2012, will be exactly 3 years since President Obama signed his infamous stimulus package into law. It was a plan designed to create jobs by growing the size of government, and its record has not been good.

 

Democrats said their costly plan ($1.2 trillion, including interest) would “save or create” up to 4 million jobs and bring the unemployment rate down to about 6% today. The unemployment rate has not fallen below 8% at any point in the last 36 months. Furthermore, the official unemployment rate does not actually count unemployed people who have given up looking for work.

The above chart shows the “labor force participation rate.” This statistic represents the share of working-age Americans who are either employed or unemployed but looking for work. It is not a pretty picture. Only 63.7% of working-age Americans are currently in the workforce – the lowest in almost 29 years!

To put it another way, 36.3% of working-age Americans do not have a job and are not even looking.

After 3 years of failure, it’s time to try something that will work. Let’s ramp up energy production. Let’s cut away government red tape that slows down job creation. And let’s design a new tax code that is simpler, flatter, and fairer. Let’s pass the Jobs Through Growth Act, and create jobs by growing the economy – not the government.