While the outgoing Obama administration may want to claim that its economic policies were a resounding success, the reality hardly bears that out.
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has averaged 1.2 percent during the Obama administration; the country has nearly $20 trillion in debt; real wages are stagnant; and, perhaps most damning, while the reported unemployment rate may only be 4.6 percent, much of the rate’s decline has come from the sharply falling labor participation rate that now sits at only 62.7 percent.
In other words, nearly 95 million Americans are currently out of the workforce, about 7 million more than in 2008.