A must-read Forbes piece which focuses not on Obama's unemployment problem of unemployment being over 8 percent for more than 41 months, but instead on the fact that long term unemployment, people out of a job for over six months, has more than doubled under Obama and addresses the reasons why.
Teaser:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, back in January 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn in, there were 2.6 million people unemployed for more than 6 months. By June 2012, the ranks of the long-term jobless soared more than 100 percent to 5.3 million.
President Obama has promoted long-term unemployment by adopting policies that make it harder and more expensive for employers to hire people. He has relentlessly pushed for higher taxes, higher energy costs, compulsory unionism and, of course, Obamacare. One doesn’t need a Harvard degree to figure out that when government makes hiring more difficult and expensive, there’s likely to be less of it.
Obama’s policy of extending and re-extending unemployment benefits is another culprit. Many academic studies show how unemployment benefits undermine the urgency of finding a job. People can afford to be more picky, and as a result they’re out of work longer. But the longer they’re out of work, the more out of touch they’re likely to be and the harder to find a another job.
This piece was published on 7/10/12, before the Obama administration's announcement that they were gutting Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare reform law by "directive" and offering waivers to bypass the work requirement which were the foundation of the welfare reform law.
Yet that directive by the Obama administration is even more evidence of what the Forbes piece was explaining.