Growing Unemployment Trumps Stimulus Efforts

Thousands of jobs were created or saved in the past 77 days, Vice President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday in the first quarterly American Recovery and Reinvestment Act progress report. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment increased during that time, continuing at the highest level in a quarter-century.

The ARRA report stated that 150,000 jobs have been created or saved since February 17. However, the BLS report, published on May 8, stated that more than 1.25 million jobs were lost in March and April as the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 percent in February to 8.9 percent in April.

Nearly a half million of the increasing number of unemployed workers completed temporary jobs in April (as opposed to losing a career job), demonstrating a lack of long-term recovery implementation that roughly triples the amount of jobs the ARRA report claims were created or saved.

Additionally, the ARRA report boasts that 600,000 new jobs will be created in the next 100 days. This will fail to meet even the amount of new additions to the labor force, which expanded by 683,000 in April, let alone make a dent in the steadily climbing unemployment rate.

In short, even if the ARRA report is accurate, the recovery and reinvestment efforts to date are grossly inadequate and the expenditures have yet to generate substantial benefits for the American labor force. Despite reinvestment, America is still far from recovery.