Obama: Unemployment Will Continue to Rise

Posted on July 14, 2009

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And some people think Obama is being too optimistic on the economy. Hope they are wrong. Wow! From the latest poll numbers this can’t be good news for Obama, much less the rest of America.

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Video hat tip to Hot Air

President Barack Obama conceded Tuesday that the unemployment rate will keep growing for “several months” as he prepared to head to battered Michigan to unveil a plan to help train people for the next generation of jobs.
Obama is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment in the nation’s community colleges, a $12 billion effort to help the two-year institutions reach, teach and train more people for “the jobs of the future.” He was to outline his program in a speech Tuesday afternoon at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich.

Great idea! Let’s spend more money we don’t have!

Before leaving town, Obama was pressed on how high the unemployment rate might climb. In Michigan, the jobless rate is 14.1 percent, worst in the nation.

“How employment numbers are going to respond is not yet clear,” Obama said after a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

“My expectation is, is that we will probably continue to see unemployment tick up for several months,” Obama said. “And the challenge for this administration is to make sure that even as we are stabilizing the financial system … are people able to find good jobs that pay good wages?”

More than 2 million jobs have been lost since Congress passed Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package.

The article goes on with Obama excuses and blames. Of course the backtrack claim now is the plan will take time, far from the original promise from Obama. The primary excuse we are hearing is how jobs are a lagging indicator of the economy. Hope in his plan isn’t looking too good for the near future.

The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

Can we find comfort in the fact that employment has long been considered a lagging indicator? It is conventionally seen as having limited predictive power since employment reflects decisions taken earlier in the business cycle. But today is different. Unemployment has doubled to 9.5% from 4.8% in only 16 months, a rate so fast it may influence future economic behavior and outlook.

Throw all of this into the mix of Obama’s record breaking 1 trillion deficit, and the clouds begin to appear much thicker. To top it all off we are actually considering letting the government take care of our healthcare, while the social security crisis continues to be ignored. How much longer will we last in this direction? A brave new world indeed!

AJ Strata:

The problem is twofold. The liberal economic stimulus scheme did not stimulate the economy (we are now told it was never supposed to until later this year). But as people are out of work or working at lower wage, part time jobs the tax revenues are dropping off. Higher spending plus lower revenues – you would think any Ivy League school graduate could do that math.

It is pathetic and so damaging it will take us years to recover from the liberal economic stupidity. These fools have bankrupt all of our futures on liberal fantasies. Fairy tales about how government can solve all problems and bring Nirvanna to Earth. Now we know the truth, we see the results of their plans. And it will be getting worse still.

McQ:

For those of you paying attention, this is all a prelude to claiming a second “stimulus” is necessary, after having misappropriated almost a trillion of your dollars previously to pay off their political debt.

The answer, of course, is “no”.

They’ve already proven they can’t be trusted to address the problem at hand without succumbing to the lure of political payoffs. And, in fact, they gave those political payoffs higher priority than the economic distress we are suffering. They should not be given the opportunity to misappropriate anymore of your money to repeat the process.

Because they will.

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