Right Change: Worst U.S. Recovery Since WWII

On June 8th Barack Obama told the American people that he believes “the private sector is doing fine”. He followed that up on July 26th by telling a crowd that, “we tried our plan, and it worked.”

Well has it worked? The AP has released a finding that, along with dozens of other reports, show that Obama’s plan has not been as successful as the administration would like you to think . In fact, the AP reports that Obama’s economy is the worst recovery since the Great Depression.

Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press states, “Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest… Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.”

The main components of the slowed recovery are feeble growth, exhausted consumers, the jobs hole and shrinking paychecks. Via TheBlaze.com:

Feeble Growth:          

America’s gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — grew 6.8 percent from the April-June quarter of 2009 through the same quarter this year, the slowest in the first three years of a postwar recovery. GDP grew an average of 15.5 percent in the first three years of the eight other comebacks analyzed. The engines that usually drive recoveries aren’t firing this time.

Exhausted Consumers:

Consumer spending has grown just 6.5 percent since the recession ended, feeblest in a postwar recovery. In the first three years of previous recoveries, spending rose an average of nearly 14 percent.

It’s no mystery why consumers are being frugal. Many have lost access to credit, which fueled their spending in the 2000s. Home equity has evaporated and credit cards have been canceled. Falling home prices have slashed home equity 49 percent, from $13.2 trillion in 2005 to $6.7 trillion early this year

Jobs Hole:

The economy shed a staggering 8.8 million jobs during and shortly after the recession. Since employment hit bottom, the economy has created just over 4 million jobs. So the new hiring has replaced 46 percent of the lost jobs, by far the worst performance since World War II. In the previous eight recoveries, the economy had regained more than 350 percent of the jobs lost, on average.

During the 1981-82 Recession, the U.S. lost 2.8 million jobs. In the three years and one month after that recession ended, the economy added 9.8 million – replacing the 2.8 million and adding 7 million more.

Never before have so many Americans been unemployed for so long - three years into a recovery. Nearly 5.2 million have been out of work for six months or more. The long-term unemployed account for 41 percent of the jobless; the highest mark in the other recoveries was 22 percent.

Shrinking Paychecks:

Earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers — a category that covers about 80 percent of the private, nonfarm workforce — have risen just over 6.2 percent since June 2009. Consumer prices have risen nearly 7.2 percent. Adjusted for inflation, wages have fallen 0.8 percent. In the previous five recoveries -the records go back only to 1964 – real wages had gone up an average 1.5 percent at this point

There is a very clear choice for this November: Barack Obama who considers this report as “doing fine” and the Democratic plan as “working, or Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan who have real fiscal sense and proven track records when it comes to jobs and budgets. One thing is clear, America can’t afford four more years of Barack Obama.

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