Why are conservatives whining over a 0.1% unemployment increase...?

[Liam]

Mr. B. Hussein Obama is a crackhead communist.
America is doomed, as is Europe.
We will be overrun by third world immigrants who refuse to integrate.

NO TO WHITE GENOCIDE.

[Rounder]

hmm... i seem to remember democrats saying obama would decrease the unemployment rate to below 4% in four years - 4 years ago - and yet, it's higher than when he started

tell me, is it that his policies don't work or that he is incapable of fixing the problem?

[RydeeOn]

The downward trend was only after an upward trend . Unemployment is higher now than when 0bama took office .

Stagnation is nothing to be bragging about .

To me it's much like saying " I don't beat my wife any more than I did 4 years ago ." as if it's somehow a good thing.

[Don'tFeartheReaper]

Because our Fuhrer can't even emulate his Nazi hero properly. Even Hitler had the German economy humming by 1937. Obama spends trillions more and we don't even see ONE new autobahn. But, he does have SUCH a nice big heavy black limo to be driven around in. He got that part right at least.


Shovel ready, yeah he meant horse doo shovel pile ready.

OH, according to economic news? More store and shop closings coming. The Christmas failed sales after tax business death toll is coming.

[Sageandscholar]

Because they are desperate to keep up the pretense that the economic disaster they caused is Obama's fault, detract attention from any positive news (for instance 2 million jobs created in each of the last two years) and so stick with cherry picking lagging indicators.

Rounder - people were expecting another Great Depression - yet the economy was growing again within 6 months of Obama taking office. Nobody was predicting a rate below 4% in four years (considering that in the past 40 years the unemployment rate has been below 4% for a total of 5 months - all in 2000 - funny how you guys never talk about the unemployment rate that Bush inherited). So please stop the nonsense.

John Wayne Fan - please educate yourself. Collecting unemployment benefits has no bearing on whether you are counted as unemployed or not.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed

imaxkr - now show me a single time a Republican pointed that out when looking at the unemployment numbers for the Bush or Reagan administrations. The way unemployment is measured has not changed signficantly in decades - bringing up alternative measures now when you never did in the past is just proof you hate the fact that things are getting better despite Republican attempts to ensure Obama failed.

Wiley - 8% was a projection that was made before it was announced the economy had contracted by 9% on an annual basis in Q4 of 2008. Just have a look at the countries that went the preferred GOP austerity approach - the UK and Germany were back in recession in 2012. The only reason we resulted in a single quarter of negative growth in Q4 2012 was the 15% quarter on quarter reduction in federal government spending Don't you ever get sick of being wrong?
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/01/30/economists-react-best-looking-contraction-in-gdp/
As for your graph - why don't you expand the years and you would see that labor force participation rate is way above historical values. Of course you don't want to do that - it wouldn't help you sell the lie would it?

Ice T - no - as you have been told before, 169,000 people did not leave the labor force last month. In fact the labor force grew last month and at 155million is higher than ever before. The number of people "not in the labor force" also grew - but these people may be immigrants, or people just turning 16 but not working - ie people who were never counted in the labor force. When you first use a statistic wrong it is reasonable to give you the benefit of the doubt and take it that you do not understand it. After being corrected when you continue to do it, well that is lying.

Zachary - as mentioned - the contraction was solely due to a one off drop in government spending. And you are dead wrong - the contraction of 0.1% is measured in real dollars and so does take into account inflation - in current dollars the GDP actually increased in Q4 2012 from $15.811tn to $15.829tn

Ryan Baker - what indications that it will keep rising? CBO projections saying it will fall? 4 million jobs created in the past 2 years?
http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

You know its quite interesting. The 2012 election campaign was predominantly fought by Conservatives cherry picking or lying about data to try to blame their recession on Obama and deny that things were getting better. But it didn't work. The US public rejected them again. So now - their standard approach is to cherry pick data and lie to try blame their recession on Obama and deny the recovery. Pavlov and Skinner demonstrated even animals can learn from their mistakes - so why can't conservatives?