Jobs Report: Progress, But Don't Break Out The Bubbly

By Isaiah J. Poole
February 3, 2012 - 9:40am ET
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012020503/jobs-report-we-need-jobs-corps-everyone

President Obama today will go to a fire house in the
Virginia suburbs of Washington to tout his plan to
promote hiring of veterans as first responders. It's a
program that is sorely needed to address an American
travesty: One out of every eight of the veterans
returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are out of a job.

But as today's unemployment report from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics shows, the economy could still use a
job corps for the rest of us as well.

The news is good: 243,000 jobs were produced in January,
and the unemployment rate went down to 8.3 percent. That
includes 257,000 in private sector jobs, offset by a
loss of 11,000 local government jobs and 6,000 federal
government jobs. With that report, the economy has seen
under President Obama's watch 10 quarters of economic
growth and five quarters of jobs growth. The report
shows growth across the private economy, notably in
manufacturing and construction.

But, as Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert
L. Borosage said in a statement this morning, "don't
break out the bubbly. Any celebration should stay
sober."

     The U.S. economy is still slogging slowly against
     fierce headwinds. We are still 6 million jobs short
     of where we were when the Great Recession began.
     There are still 21 million people in need of full-
     time work. There are still more than four people
     lining up for every available job.

     Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke stated the
     simple reality: `We still have a long way to go
     before the labor market can be said to be operating
     normally. Particularly troubling is the unusually
     high level of long-term unemployment.' Nearly one-
     third of the unemployed have been out of work for a
     year or more. These are the true casualties of Wall
     Street's excesses.

     American companies are producing more now than they
     did before the collapse. But Americans aren't
     sharing in the rewards. Profits margins are at
     record heights; CEO salaries have soared, but there
     is no recovery in jobs, and wages and benefits
     continue to fall behind.

     Austerity continues to impede the recovery.
     Government employment was flat last month, but
     state and local governments project more cuts.
     Austerity in Europe is driving the EU and the
     United Kingdom into recession. U.S. exports will
     suffer accordingly, even without a Greek default or
     a financial calamity. U.S. government spending will
     be constricted by the budget deals.

As we reported last month, the economy needs to be
creating more than 400,000 jobs a month for the next
three years in order to repair the damage done by the
2008 economic crash. By that measure, we're already
157,000 jobs behind where we need to be this year.

The Congressional Budget Office warned this week that if
Congress and the White House does nothing the economy
will continue to creep and the unemployment rate will go
up above 9 percent in 2013, before it finally slides
downward.

White House officials have expressed annoyance with the
CBO projections, but they are also assuring progressive
activists that they will over the next few weeks
continue to press the proposals in last year's American
Jobs Act, including aid to state and local government to
support schools and local police and fire departments.

We remain critical of the scope of the administration's
proposals. But they would at least move the nation
forward in providing some meaningful relief to the
nation's unemployed. Conservatives in Congress, on the
other hand, remain determined to take actions that will
move the nation backward.

The latest example is a transportation bill moving
toward the floor of the House of Representatives that
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican who
used to serve on the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, told Politico is "the worst
transportation bill I've ever seen during 35 years of
public service."

The proposal is just $260 billion over five years; by
comparison, the last full transportation bill passed by
Congress, signed by President Bush in August 2005, was
$286 billion for a period that would end in September
2009, and most transportation experts, including those
at the Chamber of Commerce, believed that level of
spending was grossly inadequate.

But worse, the bill is stuffed with poison pills, such
as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve
and forced approval of the Keystone XL pipeline,
designed to appease the oil industry and anger moderate
and progressive constituencies that normally would rally
around a transportation and infrastructure bill.
Meanwhile, it cuts funding for high-speed rail,
transportation safety for school children and, if House
Speaker John Boehner has its way, public transit.

Even with that, the Club for Growth is urging House
members to vote against the legislation because they
deem even a meager $260 billion as too much to spend to
make sure that the country can move its goods, services
and people efficiently.

That is madness at a time when we need to prepare our
transportation networks for future growth, and at a time
when we have 13 million people out of work. One way that
President Obama could respond to today's unemployment
report is to tell Congress to pass a real transportation
bill that would put Americans back to work quickly, and
reject the kowtowing to Big Oil that conservatives have
inserted into this bill.

Yes to a job corps for veterans, but don't stop there.

___________________________________________

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