So Much For The Census "Boom"

I've been pondering what better-spun headline the Obamedia could have put on today's expectedly crappy employment report.  "Unemployment rate plunges 2.0%" would sound chipper, but naturally misleading, since that would refer to the "official" rate declining from 9.7% to 9.5% (((9.7-9.5)/9.7)=.02=2.0% of 9.7%).  "Number of private sector jobs created DOUBLES in June!!!" would have the virtue of being technically correct, although 83,000 over May's 41,000 isn't exactly a hiring boom in the making (half again that much is needed just to keep up with population growth and keep the UIR steady).

The added handicap for the White House is the flip side of what they played up so much a couple of months back: the end of all those temporary census jobs:

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The decline in payroll employment reflected a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on Census 2010. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000.

The other shoe accounting for how the total number of jobs overall can decline and still have the "official" UIR edge downward as well?  One of the core objectives of Obamanomics - the growth of the permanent dependent class:

The civilian labor force participation rate fell by 0.3 percentage point in June to 64.7%. The employment-population ratio, at 58.5%, edged down over the month. (See table A-1.) …

In June, about 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, an increase of 415,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior twelve months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in June, up by 414,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)

J-Ger captures the enhanced significance of the burgeoning "discouraged worker" category:

Midweek, Obama painted the economic situation he inherited as dire, noting, “When I was sworn in, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month.” Well, this month’s jump in discouraged workers — 652,000 — is on par with the worst months of job losses for the recession.

Think of it as "jobs not saved or created".  Or "The Abandoned".  Or "permanently blackmailed Democrat voters."  The mystery is why so many economists become such sappily, insatiably gullible optimists whenever the Democrats are running the show and inevitably producing the diametrically opposite results.

Take that "discouraged worker" hokey-pokey out of the equation and the true unemployment rate (U4) has been above 10% for the past year, and the underemployment rate (U6) has been bouncing between 16% and 17% over the same period.  That's a long, lengthening, and convincing baseline of the indellible effects of Obamanomics, my friends.

As if on cue....:

New orders for factory products tumbled much more than expected in May, posting their sharpest drop since the depth of the recession and their first decline in nine months, a government report showed on Friday.

Factory orders fell 1.4% in the month, the Commerce Department said, the steepest drop since March of last year. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting a more modest 0.5% decline.

The Dow slid below 9700 as investors got even gloomier:

Stocks turned firmly lower Friday after a disappointing report on factory orders. The market had wobbled at the start as investors digested the June jobs report. …

Factory orders fell 1.4% May, nearly triple of what economists had expected.

The report is another blow to the recovery as early signs had indicated that manufacturing was leading this recovery even as the consumer remained sluggish.

"The consumer" isn't "sluggish"; "the consumer" is scared pissless of losing his job, or if he already has, of not being able to get another one.  Business, including manufacturing and housing, is in the same boat.  Hell, the entire economy is in the same boat.  Fear is not a state of mind conducive to conspicuous consumption, and if there's one thing that Obamanomics breeds like dandilion pod plants in my yard, it's fear.

Which makes The One doing a full Biden today all that much more hopeily-changeily inspiring:

Aww, look, he picked Door #1.  And We, The People, are to be reassured - or else:

After General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt told a private dinner of Italian business executives that he didn't believe China was willing to be a fair business partner, and that the Obama administration's heavy regulatory approach was not conducive to helping the U.S. economy, senior White House officials, upon hearing about the comments, went into bully mode.

Immelt made his comments at dinner in Rome earlier this week and they were later reported by the Financial Times. The remarks about the Obama administration did not include any disparagement of the president himself.

Yet, according to a contracting lobbyist for GE in Washington, senior White House officials and senior members of the Commerce and Energy Departments called Washington GE officials and corporate officers in New York.

"They [the Obama administration] weren't happy, and wanted to know why a GE official would be making those comments," said the lobbyist. "The underlying message was that GE has dealings with the federal government. It wasn't a threat, but these folks are from Chicago."

D'ya get the feeling that B.O.'s victims aren't the only ones learning how to cope with fear?  And failing miserably at it?