Euquant

Dr. Boston is the CEO of EuQuant, an economic and statistical consulting company as well as a professor of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Generally, the new unemployment figures illustrate an economy that is not growing sufficiently to generate new jobs. In fact, the most revealing feature of the unemployment data is a significant reduction in the size of the civilian labor force during the month of December. Retail sales for the month of December increased by 2.9% over last year's level. This increase exceeded expectations (which were 2.0%). Nevertheless, the sales were not sufficiently strong to reverse the unemployment situation. The unemployment rate for December was 10%, which was unchanged from the November unemployment rate of 10%. More significantly however, the number of job lost was (-85,000) following a positive increase of +4000 in the month of November. Of greater concern is the significant decrease in the size of the labor force during the month of December which decreased by (-661,000) following a -134,000 person decline in November.
The number of unemployed workers remained the same at 9.2 million workers while the number of discouraged workers increased from 861,000 to 929,000, a gain of 68,000 people.
Blacks experienced the largest gain in unemployment from 15.2% to 15.6%, while the white unemployment increased from 8.6% to 8.8%. Unemployment among Hispanics was unchanged at 12.9%.

During the holidays, I took an informal poll of persons at social functions I attended. They were asked to grade Obama’s economic performance. There was a surprisingly wide variance of opinion, which ranged from A+ to D. When I averaged the grade of each group, the averages were amazingly similar—and the overall average grade was the same grade I gave by evaluating the categories below.

FOUR (4) GRADING CATEGORIES, TWO (2) OUTCOMES IN EACH CATEGORY

1. FINANCIAL STABILITY
     A      STOPPED FINANCIAL MELTDOWN/RESCUED BANKING SYSTEM
     C+      NOT ENOUGH BANK LOANS ARE BEING CURRENTLY MADE
2. FISCAL STIMULUS
     A     PASSED FISCAL STIMULUS BILL/AVOIDED A GREAT DEPRESSION
     B-     TARGETED TOO LITTLE AID TO SMALL BUSINESSES INITIALLY
3. CONSUMER AND INVESTOR CONFIDENCE
     A+     ATTENDED TO THE ECONOMY
     B-     ACTIVIST GOV’T ROLE CAUSED SOME INVESTOR UNCERTAINTY
4. JOBS
     A     STOPPED MAMMOTH JOB LOSS
     C     FAILED TO CREATE ENOUGH NEW JOBS

OVERALL GRADE = B

First-quarter job losses averaged 691,000 per month, and fourth-quarter job losses averaged 69,000.