How Miserable Is It?

Those of us of a certain age fondly recall the old Johnny Carson - Ed McMahon schtick where Johnny would say something like "It's really cold today." Ed would respond with "How cold is it?" Johnny would deliver the punch line in the format of "It's so cold that ... " and then complete the statement. For example:

"It's really cold today."

Q: "How cold is it?"

A: "It's so cold that the cows are giving ice-cream."

A: "It's so cold that politicians have their hands in their own pockets."

A: "It's so cold that dogs are sticking to fire hydrants."

A: “It's so cold that chickens are mugging the sheep just to get wool for sweaters.”

The above is just an elaborate set-up for the question "How miserable is the economy?"

And the answer is "It's the most miserable it's been in 28 years." (Not funny, I know - just sad.)

When it comes to measuring the combination of unemployment and inflation, it doesn’t get much more miserable than this.

In fact, misery, as measured in the unofficial Misery Index that simply totals the unemployment and inflation rates, is at a 28-year high, reflective of how weak the economic recovery has been and how far there is to go.

The index, first compiled during the soaring inflation days of the 1970s by economist Arthur Okun, is registering a nausea-inducing 12.7 -- 9.1 percent for unemployment and 3.6 percent for annualized inflation -- a number not seen since 1983. The index has been above 10 since November 2009 and had been under double-digits from June 1993 through May 2008.

Note two things: first, the index soared into double digits in Nov. 2009 - the first anniversary of obama's election. Second, the unemployment figure of 9.1% is artificially low.

Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.

Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force.

We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening ... One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work.

Think about that last paragraph. There cannot be any sort of sustained economic recovery until more people are employed in jobs they are qualified for - not part time jobs flipping burgers at Micky Ds. Now ask yourself  "What is obama's job creation strategy?"

* crickets *

The sad fact is that there isn't one - or at least one that's working.

Don’t look now, but many on Obama’s economic team is (sic) abandoning ship and heading for the exits.

Obama’s economic team is headed for the doors... These are the same advisors that assured Americans that a huge expansion of entitlements, an historic increase in the size of government, almost doubling of the national debt by $5 trillion, while hobbling small businesses with a new thicket of regulations, would actually result in economic expansion and job growth across the nation.

Not only were these presidential advisors wrong, but disastrously so. Rarely has a group failed so spectacularly. Thus, Americans should not be surprised that many of ... Obama’s National Economic Council team are abandoning the sinking Obama ship. This mass exodus of Team Obama’s economic advisors is a stunning vote of no confidence in the President’s economic policies. Obama needs to consider this: When all of your staff give up, they are telling you that there is something flawed in the current approach that doesn’t work.

Among the particularly hard-hit in the current economy are recent college graduates.

Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work.

The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008 ... That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.

Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007.

As a college professor, and the parent of two high school students who are planning to go to college, to me this is easily the most troubling element of today's economic conditions. What's the point of spending years and thousands of dollars for a 1 in 2 chance of getting a job? Yet without a skilled and educated workforce and American economic engine will continue to sputter.

We simply cannot survive another four years of obama.