Friday’s unemployment numbers were what economic experts call a “huge miss.” Only 142,000 net jobs were added to the nation’s payroll in September, despite expectations of more than 200,000. Even worse, last month’s job creation numbers were revised downward, to an even lower 136,000.
Both figures suggest that the economy cannot create jobs quickly enough to keep up with young workers entering the market. Yet as it happens, so many people are giving up on ever finding work that there seems to be plenty of room for the new job-seekers.
The workforce participation rate, the share of people who are either working or seeking work, reached a 38-year low. A small part of this is due to the retirement of baby boomers, but not much. Workforce participation among workers age 25 to 54, precisely those who should be building lives, careers and families, continues to hover near a multi-decade low as well.
More than 19 percent of those in that age category, well past school and far from retirement age, have simply given up or found some other way to survive besides working. Some six million souls in that critical age category have simply stopped looking for work since the 2008 recession, and there is no sign that they are starting to look for it again in large numbers.
This is what an economy looks like when the cost of government and compliance gobbles up an ever-increasing share of production. The economy strains under excessive regulation, heaped upon it layer after layer in the name of good-sounding causes such as environmental protection, health care for workers, and the like. At some point, an economy carrying so much weight simply cannot create opportunities for the nation’s inhabitants anymore.
In May, the Heritage Foundation came out with its annual survey of federal regulations, regulations that impose more than $100 million in costs on job creators each year. President Obama has set new records in this category, imposing 184 such regulations through 2014. In comparison, the second President Bush imposed only 75 such regulations in his first six years.
There are no fireworks to mark the occasion when an economy passes a tipping point in this suicidal process. Rather, there is just stagnation, precisely what we are experiencing under Obama’s lamentable misgovernment in lieu of an economic recovery.
