A reminder from a post back in May:
While the American economy added 293,000 jobs last month, according to the separate household survey, the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons — “involuntary part-time workers” as the Labor Department calls them – increased by almost as much, to 278,000 to 7.9 million. … Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin says what we’re all thinking:”This is not good news as it reflects the reliance on part-time work. … the decline in hours and rise of part-time work is troubling in light of anecdotal reports of the impact of the Affordable Care Act.”
Here is today’s news:
In June, the household survey reported that part-time jobs soared by 360,000 to 28,059,000 – an all time record high. Full time jobs? Down 240,000. And looking back at the entire year, so far in 2013, just 130K Full-Time Jobs have been added, offset by a whopping 557K Part-Time jobs.
Predictably, the cheerleading Associated Press calls today’s news “robust.” Why, not since Oceania’s chocolate ration changed has there been greater news! Oh, and it’s also good news that unemployment is “holding steady” … at two and a half percentage points above where the president promised it would be by now, and over two percentage points higher than that same president predicts it will be, eventually, you know, by 2023.
