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Analysis

This report follows our October 2013 update and previous quarterly reports dating back to our first “Obama’s Numbers” article in October 2012. All figures here reflect the most recent available as of Jan. 14.

Jobs

As of December, the economy had gained a net total of 3,246,000 jobs since Obama first took office, and the unemployment rate had fallen to 6.7 percent, down from 7.8 percent.

Despite the gains, more than 10 million people remained unemployed, including 3.9 million who had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. That’s an increase of nearly 1.2 million “long-term unemployed” since the start of the Obama presidency.

The average time that an unemployed person in December had been looking for work was 37 weeks, nearly double the average at the time Obama entered the White House.

Another troubling jobs statistic is the civilian labor force participation rate, which has now declined by 2.9 percentage points since Obama became president, to the lowest point since 1978. But that’s not entirely due to “discouraged workers” dropping out because they believe no jobs are available, as some Obama critics would have you believe.

Other labor-force dropouts include members of the baby-boom generation, who are retiring in droves. They also include disabled workers gaining Social Security disability benefits (a number that has doubled in the past 17 years, and is up 20 percent just since Obama took office).

There’s a lively debate among economists about the causes — and implications — of the shrinking participation rate, which started long before Obama took office. The rate actually peaked in early 2000 and declined 1.5 percent under Obama’s predecessor. A Labor Department economist, looking at current demographic trends, predicts further declines through at least 2022 — long after the end of Obama’s presidency.

Disappointing Exports

The president has a long way to go to meet his goal of doubling exports of U.S. goods and services, which he first made in his 2010 State of the Union address. So far, exports have increased only 33.6 percent since Obama took office, according to data from the U.S. Commerce Department. (We compared seasonally adjusted figures for the fourth quarter of 2008 with those for the July – September quarter of 2013, the most recent figures available.)

Obama is facing the same global economic headwinds that he did six months ago, when we last updated the export figure. Simply put, overseas customers are still struggling. European unemployment is stuck at 12 percent, for example. And China’s economic growth has slowed and remains problematic. The president mentions his 2010 National Export Initiative on occasion. But at the current rate he won’t come close to meeting his original goal of doubling exports by the end of 2014.

Rising Federal Debt

The president is fond of boasting that annual federal deficits are falling rapidly. But they remain large by historical standards. And the fact is, they are piling up.

Total federal debt now stands at nearly $17.3 trillion, which is 63 percent higher than when Obama took office. That figure includes money the government owes to itself, chiefly through the Social Security trust funds.

A figure that economists consider more important — the debt the government owes to the public — has risen even more dramatically. That figure now stands at $12.3 trillion, an increase of 95 percent under Obama. At the current rate it will surely rise to a doubling during Obama’s presidency — possibly by the time of our next update three months hence.

Net interest payments consumed 6.4 percent of all federal spending in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office officially projects that interest payments will gobble up an even bigger share of federal spending in the future. “CBO expects interest rates to rebound in coming years from their current unusually low levels, sharply raising the government’s cost of borrowing,” CBO said in its most recent long-term budget outlook document.

Government Workers

While cash-strapped state and local governments have been laying off teachers, firefighters, police and other workers, the federal government has increased the number of its employees under Obama.

The most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that as of December, workers on the federal payroll (excluding postal workers) numbered more than 2.1 million, up 3.2 percent since January 2009.

During the same time, the number of workers on state payrolls went down 3 percent and those on local government payrolls declined by 3.5 percent. A big reason for the disparity is that state and local governments generally must balance their spending and income each year, while the federal government can keep up spending by borrowing.

The figures also show that in recent months state and federal governments have been able to hire back some of their laid-off workers. Obama’s hiring spree also peaked in 2011 (ignoring spikes in hiring of temporary Census workers in 2010), and the number of non-postal federal workers has gone down more or less steadily during the budget battles of the past two years. But the number is above where it was when he took office.