Sixty-nine thousand jobs sounds like a lot.
It’s not.
We’re not even in the same galaxy as ‘a lot’.
Think about it this way.
America graduates about 1.7 million people from college with either an Associate or Bachelor’s degree each year. That means that–give or take a few thousand people who are going for their Master’s or Doctorates–right around 1.7 million people need jobs towards the middle of May each year. Keep in mind that we’re not including the millions of high school grads that are looking to join the workforce right after getting their diplomas. For our purposes, lets just use that 1.7 million figure as our baseline.
In fact, the economy has to produce about 142,000 jobs just to get the Bachelor’s degree holders a job.
Let’s look at this year’s job creation rate:
June 2011: 18,000.
July 2011: 117,000.
August 2011: 0 (No, that’s not a typo; you’re looking at a big fat zero.)
September 2011: 91,000.
October 2011: 80,000.
November 2011: 120,000.
December 2011: 100,000.
January 2012: 200,000.
February 2012: 216,000.
March 2012: 120,000.
April 2012: 115,ooo.
May 2012: 69,000.
That adds up to right around 1,250,000 jobs created in the last 12 months. I’m no math whiz but I’m pretty certain that 1.7 million is greater than 1.25 million.
I think.
Again, that 1.7 million is just college graduates with an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree.
The American economy didn’t produce enough jobs to handle the 2 and 4 year degree holders our higher ed system produced, much less the high school graduates who need work.
Is this anybody’s idea of a healthy economy?
