Dear Editor:
We just had a good jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 255,000 jobs created in July. However, if this is the best we do we will never recover from the last recession.
Another downside of the report is that only 62.8 percent of the civilian non institutional population is in the labor force. To get back to the 66.8 percent we had the last time we had a balanced budget, during the Clinton presidency, 17.9 million more people would need to be employed.
From January 2008, the prerecession high for non-farm employment, through July 2016, 6,016,000 jobs have been "created" during this 102-month, post-recession period, an increase of 4.3 percent.. During the same time the Labor Participation Rate dropped from 66.2 percent to 62.8 percent.
For comparison, during the 102-month period before January 2008, July 1999 through January 2008, 9,015,000 jobs were created, a 7.0 percent increase. During that time the Labor Participation Rate dropped from 67.1 percent to 66.2 percent.
When compared with how Reagan's "Voodoo Economics" worked after the recession during his presidency, the non-farm employment growth over a 102-month period, July 1981 through January 1990, was 17,582,000, a 19 percent increase. The Labor Participation Rate during that time increased from 63.8 percent to 66.8 percent.
The only reason the unemployment rate is so low, 4.9 percent, is because so many more people have become takers, instead of producers, as shown by the huge drop in the Labor Participation Rate.
By the way, in eight years Reagan added $3.1 trillion to the federal debt, while in seven years Obama has already added over $7 trillion to the debt. Both figures are in 2009 dollars.
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