Major Update: California’s unemployment rate jumped to an all time high of 11.5% in May (from 11.1% in April). Do the Democrats really think this pivotal electoral state will stay Dem blue if these conditions continue for the rest of the year? How about Florida, where unemployment shot up 4.4% to a whopping 10.2% unemployment rate? An incredible EIGHT states hit all time unemployment records in May.

The Labor Department says 48 states and the District of Columbia saw employment conditions deteriorate last month.

…

The eight states that set records are: California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

These don’t appear to be green shoots of a economic turn around – end update.

There is good reason to be concerned that the economy is not even close to turning around yet. I found this disturbing chart showing the Oregon and Michigan unemployment for May (which are the two highest in the nation at a shocking 12.4% and 14.1%, respectively). Not only did the levels send  a shiver through me, so did the ‘trajectory’, the path the numbers are on.

They look like a rocket launch. There is no turn around in sight. Even if the descent slowed, it is still climbing- and damn fast. There is another heart wrenching chart here for Michigan, which is clearly has a stagnant work force level as its unemployment rate climbs. Ohio jumped from 10.2% to 10.8% from April to May. New York State rose from 7.7% to 8.2%.  Pennsylvania went from 7.8% to 8.2%. California has not announced yet, but it should be a shocker (given their incredible state budget woes). Florida should also report a large leap given the weekly unemployment claim numbers from the Department of Labor (scroll to the bottom).

Initial claims (newly unemployed) are still at a staggering 608,000 a month. This is down only 1% from the peak job shedding months, so we still have a ways to go. As this article notes, the problem in the unemployment claims numbers is we have been at this so long benefits are running out. So those who began 26+ weeks ago are dropping off the rolls while new claims keep crashing in:

The number of people receiving unemployment aid fell for the first time since early January.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean more companies are hiring. Fewer people are receiving jobless aid largely because more of them have exhausted their standard unemployment benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.

Government figures, in fact, show the proportion of recipients who used up their jobless benefits averaged 49 percent in May, a record.

Just shows how incompletely the government tracks this key economic indicator. Actually, the imprecision allows the liberals to put a fake happy face on a supposed turn around. They keep pointing to the 1% drop in new claims as some miracle. I keep looking at that first chart and I fail to see any substantial deceleration in the problem.

That is the conundrum for the liberal Democrats with their failed economic experiment of trying to use the bloated and lethargic federal government to ‘stimulate’ job creation. They cannot do anything but pretend it is all OK when it is not. The wheels for this human tragedy are grinding slowly onward, and they cannot a damn thing to speed bureaucracy up.

Which comes to the tipping point question: when will America realize the Change they brought into power is actually Hopeless? When will the realization hit America these people cannot help them? It is a question many in the political industrial complex (pols, lobbyists, puppet media outlets) are pondering:

Seventy-two percent.

That’s the number of people in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal pollwho say that President Obama inherited the “current economic conditions” gripping the country as compared to just 14 percent who said the situation was the result mostly of his policies.

The message here is clear. Although people remain deeply pessimistic about the state of the economy — 12 percent are either very or somewhat satisfied while a whopping 89 percent are somewhat or very dissatisfied — they don’t blame Obama for it.

Yet.

If and when the American public begins to see this as Obama’s economy rather than George W. Bush‘s economy, the data in the NBC/WSJ poll suggests the high-flying president could be in for some more difficult times.

Obama’s decision to use government to grow the economy out of its current rut, a decision that means a significant increase in spending and future deficits has been greeted skeptically by voters, according to the NBC/WSJ data.

We are in the denial stage for voters who supported Obama right now. They had high hopes, and they are clinging to them for as long as possible. Because to admit they were wrong is a very tough and emotional barrier. And the arrogant, lecturing from the also-failed far right only makes transcending the denial better that much tougher.

I for one know the far right is not as ‘right’ as much as they wish. The idea of tax cuts to stimulate job creation, limiting the amount the federal government hinders and bleeds the private sector is important to many. Those are “Duh!” concepts that are supported by a broad range of people from left of center to the right. The right did not invent this – John Kennedy was a great believer in the concept as he proved. Some could argue they poisoned these tried and true concepts with their hate and anger over immigrants and hispanics. Their anger at everyone in the center bled over and tainted even the most obvious truths.

The fact stands, though, that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi stimulus plan enacted back in February is going nowhere. They are not yet spending money to create new jobs (let alone saving them). I have been tracking regarding their job creating efforts, showing the whole sad story.

In the first graph there are 4 sets of columns showing: (from left to right) (1) the amount budgeted for stimulus programs, (2) the amount allocated to specific programs, (3) the amount spent creating jobs and (4) the amount unspent from the total budget. (click image to enlarge)

As everyone can see much of the money has not even been assigned to programs (an arduous but legally required process to make sure programs are valid). The second chart translates the dollar amounts for the last three sets of columns into percentages of the budgeted amounts. (click image to enlarge)

Bottom line: 99% of the job-creating money for these departments/agencies is stuck in the government coffers – doing nothing. Here’s the summary across all 6:

• $105 billion was budgeted across the organizations to start new programs and create jobs (the largest amounts going  to the Departments of Energy and Transportation)
• Of that, only $22.7 billion as even been allocated to programs to be spent (21.5%)
• The total amount spent to date on stimulus programs: $0.350 billion has been spent stimulating the economy. A paltry 0.33%.

Nothing spent. And all this data is from the government sites reporting the progress on recovery programs. It is the government’s own report card on their dismal failure.

Here’s the kicker. Let’s assume the budgeted (allocated) money was actually spent creating jobs over the last four months. This is similarly (but not identical) to how tax cuts of the same magnitude could have worked on our economy since February. If the $22.7 billion dollars went directly to paying unemployed workers at a full time, $100k per year job, that would have employed 681,000 people. That would have also knocked out a complete month of new unemployment claims. 

The liberal economic experiment using the government to stimulate job creation is an utter and complete failure. Obama and the Dems may have inherited a problem, but their answers to the problem were all wrong. And that realization will come to hit the American public as this unemployment debacle runs through out the summer of 2009. It is not a matter of ‘if’, only ‘when’.

Tags: Stimulus Bill, Unemployment