Opinion

Scary job figures …

The Labor Department reported that 58.1% of people who were 16 years of age or older, and who weren’t in jail or in the military, had jobs as of July. That’s the lowest point since the deep recession of 1983.

The falling employment-to-population ratio underscores some unpleasant realities. For one, the drop in the unemployment rate, to 9.1% from 9.2%, has less to do with people getting jobs than with people leaving the workforce. The Labor Department’s household survey suggests an added 374,000 people weren’t seeking work in July. (Only those who are actively seeking work count as unemployed.) Even the 114,000 jobs that nonfarm employers added to their payrolls in July isn’t enough to keep up with growth in the population, which the Labor Department estimated at 182,000.

— Mark Whitehouse, Bloomberg

… and frightening debt

When George W. Bush took up residence in the White House in January 2001, total US debt stood at $5.95 trillion. Last week it was $14.3 trillion, with $2.4 trillion freshly authorized by Congress Tuesday.

Ten years later, what do we have to show for this decade of deficit spending? A glut of unoccupied homes, unemployment exceeding 9%, a stalled economy and a huge mountain of debt. Real gross domestic product growth averaged 1.6% from 2001 through the second quarter of 2011.

It doesn’t sound like a very good trade-off. And now Keynesians are whining about discretionary spending cuts of $21 billion next year? That’s one-half of one percent, a “cut” only in the fanciful world of government accounting. A lost decade doesn’t seem like a good return on an $8.35 trillion investment.

— Caroline Baum, Bloomberg