There is no way even for the spin-obsessed White House to sugar-coat this:

The pace of job losses quickened in June after slowing just a month earlier, casting a shadow over the Obama administration’s attempts to stanch months of declines in the labor market.
The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing and business and professional services sectors.
The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.
Economists said a decline of 322,000 jobs in May had raised expectations that the market was bottoming out as the economy struggled to right itself, but the numbers on Friday dashed some of those hopes.

The New York Times helpfully suggests “The figures also raised questions about whether the Obama administration, which has already passed a $787 billion stimulus plan, needed to step in again to shore up the American worker.” Well, you have to give them credit. There is no failure too great, no government boondoggle too ineffective for which the answer is not “More of the same!”

As this report noted:

An elevated unemployment rate could become a political liability for President Barack Obama when congressional elections are held next year. The last time the unemployment rate topped 10 percent, the party of the president — then Ronald Reagan’s GOP — lost 26 House seats in midterm elections in 1982.

So far, many people are saving — rather than spending — the extra money in their paychecks from Obama’s tax cut, blunting its help in bracing the economy. Much of the economic benefit of Obama’s increased government spending on big public works projects won’t kick in until 2010, analysts say.

The White House last week said federal money was being shoveled out of Washington quickly, but states aren’t steering the cash to counties that need jobs the most.

The public, not to mention the president’s political opponents, will likely reach different conclusions from the Gray Lady’s: the stimulus is a bust, the economy is not improving, and the president isn’t doing anything likely to lead to job growth. And no, a jumbo energy tax and a government take-over of health care are not going to increase jobs.

As one might expect, the markets dived at the opening. With 70% of the economy related to consumption, it isn’t likely we’ll see a significant rebound with more and more people either out of work or fearful of being out of work in the future. Perhaps it is time to focus on job growth, not government expansion.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.