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You are confusing Non-Farm employment with total employment.
When Obama took office, 142.2M people were employed; 133.6M held non-farm jobs.
And now, far less people are employed in both categories, 139.8 and 131M respectively. 2.4M LESS total people are employed, and 2.5M LESS people are employed in non-farm jobs.
Learn to read the data at the BLS.gov.
You're just babbling now. And ignoring the simple fact that there were 6 million more jobs in Dec. 2010 than Romer predicted there would be without the stimulus. That's your argument at work. Your argument proving the success of the stimulus.
The High Price of Obama's Fake Jobs Scheme:
Sometimes magic tricks just aren't that great, and even the most innocent, wide-eyed child can't be fooled by the illusionist's flourish. Such is the case with the rabbit the White House is trying to pull out of its magic hat by claiming that President Barack Obama's stimulus has created or saved 2.4 million jobs at a cost of $666 billion, all while the United States continues to suffer 9.1 percent unemployment. If you do the math, that comes out to around $278,000 per job.
That information comes from a White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report released last Friday that desperately tries to maintain the illusion that Obama's stimulus has saved the day for struggling Americans.
If you take the CEA at its word, you might be a bit confused. Two quarters ago, it claimed that the stimulus added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs. That's 288,000 more jobs than it claims the stimulus has created or saved today. (The Congressional Budget Office has downgraded its claim of the stimulus' "success," too). Compare that to the President's promise to create 3.5 million jobs by 2010the economy, instead, lost millions of jobs, leaving Obama 7.3 million jobs short of his goal.
The facts are these: Last month, the average length of unemployment stood at 39.7 weeks, the longest since the Department of Labor began tracking it. The unemployment rate increased from 9.0 to 9.1 percent, 13.9 million Americans are unemployed, the economy added only 54,000 jobs, and the labor force participation rate remained flat at 64.2 percent, an all-time low for the fifth straight month.
According to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "the economys improvement since the recessions end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II." And things aren't getting better anytime soon. In short, the stimulus did not work. Jobs were lost, not created, and the economy is suffering the effects.
The stark reality of America's unemployment picture aside, there remains the notion that stimulus spending on infrastructure could have "created or saved" jobs in the first place, whether the price tag is $50,000 per job or $700,000. Brian Riedl disputes that theory:
Many lawmakers claim that every $1 billion in highway stimulus can create 47,576 new construction jobs. But Congress must first borrow that $1 billion from the private economy, which will then lose at least as many jobs. Highway spending simply transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another.
As economist Ronald Utt has explained, "The only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jobs is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven."
Manna has not descended from heaven, and a rabbit is not emerging from the White House's hat anytime soon. But like an incompetent fire department trying to save the basement of a building burnt beyond recognition, the White House is trying to salvage the remains of an economic policy gone wrong.
History should be the President's guide (unfortunately though, liberals REFUSE to learn from history). According to Riedl, in the 1930s, New Deal lawmakers doubled federal spendingyet unemployment remained above 20 percent until World War II. Fast-forward to Japan's 1990 recession, in which the country passed 10 stimulus spending bills over eight years, which resulted only in a stagnant economy.
President Obama would do better by the American people if he gave up the fiction he is trying so desperately to maintain and recognize that it's the private sector, not government, that creates jobs and keeps the country runningwithout costing the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
