Today Americans across the country woke up to the report of another month of abysmal jobs numbers. But these numbers aren’t news to the millions of people unemployed or underemployed, these numbers simply codify what they already know to be true: our country is hurting and it isn’t getting better.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that only 69,000 jobs were added in the month of May, far below market expectations and well short of the 150,000 jobs that BLS says are needed every month just to keep pace with population growth. While the announcement of any new jobs is welcomed, May marks the fourth straight month of slowing job growth and demonstrates that Americans continue to suffer through a painfully tepid recovery made even slower by the president’s failed policies.

Remember when President Obama promised that if we passed the “Stimulus,” we could keep unemployment under 8%?  The unemployment rate in May increased to 8.2 percent, marking an inauspicious milestone—the 40th consecutive month that unemployment has been at or above 8 percent under President Obama. The “Stimulus” has provided our country with record unemployment with a trillion dollar price tag.  Despite glaring evidence of how government spending doesn’t create jobs, take for instance the $528 million Solyndra debacle, President Obama continues to stump that the only problem with the “Stimulus” was that it wasn’t big enough.

In addition to the disappointing unemployment numbers, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of able Americans working or looking for work, was near a 30-year low in May. If the percentage of Americans in the work force were as high today as at the beginning of this recession, unemployment would actually be 11.7 percent.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Over the course of the past three years, the actions taken by President Obama and Congressional Democrats have prolonged the country’s economic woes making almost every aspect of daily life more difficult average Americans. What the administration is doing is clearly not working.   It is abundantly clear that our country’s current approach to rebuilding the economy isn’t getting it done.

If presiding over the slowest jobs recovery since records were kept wasn’t bad enough, the table below shows, by almost any measure, the country is worse off after three years of an Obama presidency.

American Before President Obama Took Office & Now

Unemployment By The Numbers

• 40: The unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent for 40 consecutive months. Before President Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8 percent for this long since the Great Depression. Over three years ago, the Obama Administration said that unemployment would never reach 8 percent if the “stimulus” was approved.

• 8.2%: The unemployment rate for the month of May was 8.2 percent, up from 8.1 percent in April. May marked the first month that the unemployment rate has increased since June 2011. Since the president’s failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” was enacted in February 2009 unemployment has averaged 9.1 percent.

• Less than 6%: The level at which the Obama Administration claimed unemployment would be today if the “stimulus” was signed into law was below 6 percent.

• 12,720,000: There were 12.72 million unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of May, an increase of 220,000 from April. There have been more than 12 million unemployed Americans every month that President Obama has been in office.

• $1,154: Since 2008, the year President Obama was elected, median family income has declined by $1,154, falling to its lowest level since 1996.

• 13th: Where the U.S. ranks in ease of starting a business in the world according to a World Bank report. In 2007, the U.S. ranked 3rd.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2012 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Blog Posts.