If This is Recovery, God Save Us from a Slowdown

Is the economy heading for another recession?  Heck if I know.

What we can tell, however, is how weak the current “recovery” is.  Investors Business Daily runs down the dismal numbers in “Obama’s Economy–Help, We’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up“:

Household incomes are still down 4.4% since the recession ended four years ago. Meanwhile, the unemployment picture may be even worse than we think. The Obama “recovery” continues to impress.

According to a report released this week by Sentier Research, the inflation-adjusted median household income remains $2,380 below where it stood when the Obama “recovery” officially started in June 2009 — a drop of 4.4%.

Sentier’s monthly data, derived from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, show that incomes fell more in the year after the recovery started than it did during the recession itself. And household incomes have basically flat-lined ever since.

“As the unemployment rate and the duration of unemployment remained high,” the authors note, “median annual household income continued its decline.”

The picture gets even grimmer the deeper you dive into the data. The most vulnerable groups — blacks, Hispanics, female-headed families and the young — have fared far worse under Obama than everyone else.

Meanwhile, our pals at ZeroHedge have compiled “33 Shocking Facts About How Badly the Economy Has Tanked Under Obama.”  Here’s just the first five:

It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy.  That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality.  The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president…

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.

#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been “created” in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.

#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.

#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

The rest of the 28 are equally depressing.

I’ll add my thought, which I am sure others are pointing out and providing data to back up: without the domestic oil and gas boom, things would still be at crisis level lows.  And we all know how Obama feels about that unanticipated development.  Here a simple graph, from our friends at the Institute for Energy Research, not only tells the story well, but also suggests how we might get additional growth and high paying jobs:

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