Economic Reports Provide a Trifecta of Bad News For Job Creation
The bad news on the economic front continued this morning when the Department of Labor announced that 429,000 more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week – joining the nearly 14 million Americans already without a job.
Thursday’s initial unemployment insurance claims numbers illustrate an economy struggling to grow and create jobs and come less than 24 hours after two other reports that further underscore Democrats’ failed economic policies. Two independent sets of experts, the Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released analyses Wednesday showing the U.S. economy continues to be on the wrong track – both in the short-term and the long-term. The Federal Reserve lowered its short-term forecast for economic growth and raised its unemployment rate forecast, predicting that unemployment will remain near 9 percent for the rest of this year.
The long-term prognosis isn’t any better. The CBO long-term outlook projects that under likely conditions, the debt held by the public will climb to 187 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – nearly twice the value of every good and service produced in the United States.
Thursday’s initial unemployment insurance claims numbers illustrate an economy struggling to grow and create jobs and come less than 24 hours after two other reports that further underscore Democrats’ failed economic policies. Two independent sets of experts, the Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released analyses Wednesday showing the U.S. economy continues to be on the wrong track – both in the short-term and the long-term. The Federal Reserve lowered its short-term forecast for economic growth and raised its unemployment rate forecast, predicting that unemployment will remain near 9 percent for the rest of this year.
The long-term prognosis isn’t any better. The CBO long-term outlook projects that under likely conditions, the debt held by the public will climb to 187 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – nearly twice the value of every good and service produced in the United States.
Commenting on the dire outlook projected in these reports, Ways and Means Chairman Camp (R-MI) stated: “These grim reports further demonstrate the urgent need to address our nation’s fiscal imbalance. Congress needs to eliminate the out-of-control spending habits of the past, make meaningful reforms to entitlement programs – including Medicare – and promote job creation by reforming our tax code and increasing U.S. exports. These steps are necessary to providing American businesses the certainty they need to grow our private sector and get families back to work.”
Source: Department of Labor unemployment rate data and Obama Administration January 2009 projections (in “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”)
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