Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Other New Normal

I guess getting used to having gas prices consistently hovering around 3 dollars a gallon isn't enough. We also have gotten used to unemployment hanging at 7.6% or more.

54 Months: Record Stretch of 7.5%+ Unemployment Continues
(CNSNews.com) - Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.
Today, BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for June was 7.6 percent, the same it was in May.
In December 2008, the month after Obama was first elected and the month before he was inaugurated, unemployment was 7.3 percent. In January 2009, it climbed to 7.8 percent. In February, the month Obama signed what the Congressional Budget Office would later determine was an $830 billion economic stimulus law, the unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent.
In the Obama era, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2010. It did not dip below 9 percent until October 2011, when it hit 8.9 percent.  From August to September 2012, it dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent—the first time during Obama’s tenure it went under 8 percent.
Since then, the lowest it has gone has been 7.5 percent—the rate it hit in April. But after April, it ticked back up to 7.6 percent in May and stayed at 7.6 percent in June.~snip~
Add to that number of workers at involuntary part time as opposed to full time and we have a shift in wealth all right as our middle class shrinks. All thanks to Obamacare as employers try to avoid the penalties mandated by it.
It's a shame that the war on the middle class doesn't get the same amount of press as the "war on women" or even the george Zimmerman trial.

5 comments:

Third News said...

I expect Obamacare's delayed business/insurance 2014 midterm elections strategy will also include a redefinition of what is part-time.

The number of "Involuntary’ Part-Time" employees will increase when the 30 hours a week marker is lessened to trap more into the exchange markets. In preparation, will business act defensively and increase the buffer between part and full-time?

systolic said...

Obama and the democrats are engaging in a successful war against the middle class, cutting wages is just one part of it.
Forcing people into government controlled programs is the other.
It's all about control.

Third News said...

I think I will write on this topic too

systolic said...

It would be nice if people realized that the real battle isn't against each other but is us vs. government.

Third News said...

I don't think it is the government that is the problem but people who fail in their duty to uphold the constitution.

Our constitution brilliantly describes what our government is, and what it is not, and I have faith those words