3 years later: the failure of the Pallone back Stimulus package

Three years ago yesterday marked the anniversary of the Recovery Act a.k.a. stimulus package being signed into law by Pres. Obama. Our "lovely" Congressman Frank Pallone supported the bill with open arms. Frank Pallone believes that the stimulus package is a great law that is creating millions of jobs. Pallone stated that there is "Evidence that the Recovery Act is creating jobs"


However since Frank Pallone has only been a politician all of his life he knows little about job creation and growth.

Over the past several months there has been much talk about the unemployment rate going down. At first glance that seems like great news, however if one takes a microeconomics class you will know the real reason why the unemployment rate is going down and not unemployment itself.

You see when the Labor Department conducts its monthly survey to calculate the unemployment rate they asked the question: are you unemployed and currently looking for a job. If you are unemployed and have given up looking for work you are not counted. If you took a minimum-wage job and are looking for more work you are not counted. At this point there are millions of Americans who simply given up looking for work, and millions more are doing jobs at minimum wage because they can't find work in their field.

 A great illustration of this is looking to see how many Americans are actually in the workforce.

As you can see when the stimulus was signed into law approximately 66% of the country was in the workforce however as of January 2012 approximately 64% of the country is in the workforce. For a stimulus package that was supposed to create millions of jobs the evidence is to the contrary!