Jobs Numbers Look Better, Still Feel Crappy

This morning's unemployment report was OK, not great. I'm sure it will be spun as evidence of Barack Obama's economic genius, but the question that I and other have addressed before is not what the numbers are or how they can be spun, but how the economy feels to the average Joe. The MSM can declare "land of milk and honey" to the rooftops, but if average folks don't viscerally feel good about the economy it's just empty spin and effectively for naught. The key to examining how the economy will affect the 2012 election is not to focus on the numbers but to gain insight into how the economy truly feels to voters. Here is probably the best example of what I am getting at: oil is spiking higher to over $100/barrel so you'd think it'd be a great time to be in the oil business, from shareholders on down to roughnecks. And you'd be wrong. It's a great time to be a shareholder in, say Exxon, but it's a terrible time to own a business in energy services or to be a rig worker. It takes a special talent for a Democrat to reward oil investors while ass-reaming the industry's blue collar workers and small businessmen, but this President certainly has that something special.

For the broader economy, much the same is playing out. We know that companies are filling their increasing need for labor with temp help as well as overtime from existing employees. Employers seem to be filling their gaps by hook or by crook and studiously avoiding taking on the risk of new fulltime employees. This is likely due to a combination of natural conservatism and fear of new and increasing regulatory burderns. Now, here's a piece that contributes additional evidence to the thesis that the economy feels alot worse than the numbers would indicate, at least for the lowest skilled among us. (Note, this is not to say that the numbers are good, they are not. The numbers are bad, so feeling worse than bad numbers, means feeling pretty darned terrible.) If you are marginally employable, things are looking pretty bleak, and this hardship falls disproportionately on the young, immigrants, the poorly educated, and people who chose, imprudently, to take a break from work to live on the government cheese for awhile. Thus has Democrats' economic policy walloped a Democrat core constituency. Makes you almost pine away for the economic dummies of the Bush administration that at least gave us a taste of sub-6% unemployment. Thank God for all that high quality talent nearly brimming over in the Obama White House!