Keynes Fail: 77 Months With Net Zero Job Growth

David Stockman reports:

Yes, the nonfarm payroll clocked in at 138.5 million jobs and thereby retraced for the first time the point at which it stood 77 months ago in December 2007. This predictably elicited another “milestone of progress” squeal from the mainstream media.

So you have to wonder. Did these people skip history class? Do they understand the vital idea of “context”? Are they so mesmerized by paint-by-the-numbers agit prop from Wall Street and Washington that they have come to mindlessly embrace the notion that any number that is better than the last “print” is all that it takes—regardless of composition, quality or longer-term trend?

Thus, consider the ancient days of the Reagan era. Back then there were actually 15.0 million new jobs by the time that 77 months had elapsed after the June 1982 bottom. And these were honest-to-goodness new jobs that had never before existed, not born again jobs of the type that CNBC has made a “jobs Friday” fetish out of ever since the Great Recession was officially declared over in June 2009.

So if you want to try a little “context” absurdity recall this. So far we have created a trifling 100k “new” jobs since the last cyclical peak. During the equivalent 77 months in the Reagan era the US economy actually generated 150 times more jobs!

The grand failure of Keynesian economics.