Friday, April 5, 2013

US economy adds fewest jobs in 9 months; Percentage of Americans working or looking for jobs lowest in nearly 34 years

US employers added just 88,000 jobs in March, the fewest in nine months and less than half of what many economists were expecting, the AP reported on Friday.

Economists were anticipating an increase of 190,000 jobs in March.

The unemployment rate fell to 7.6% from 7.7% in March, the AP reported, but that was only because more people stopped searching for jobs. People who are out of a job are no longer counted as unemployed once they stop searching for employment. The percentage of Americans working or looking for jobs fell to 63.3 percent in March, the lowest percentage in nearly 34 years - since 1979.

Some Obama loyalists are desperately trying to assign blame for the bad job numbers on the "sequester" - which was actually Obama's wacky brainchild - but, as the Wall Street Journal points out: "you won’t find much evidence of that in the latest jobs report."

"The federal government’s civilian workforce fell by just 2,000 in March apart from almost 12,000 cuts at the U.S. Postal Service, which of course has a different set of problems," the Journal noted. "State-government jobs rose by 9,000... and local-government employment dipped by just 2,000 jobs."

So, blaming sequestration is just a cop-out, a worn-out ploy used by the left-wing propagandists as part of their never-ending campaign to prop up a failed and hopelessly inept Presidency.