The Mort Report

Mort Zuckerman voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and has been walking it back ever since. He has a longish piece at U.S. News this week that lays out some reasons Obama may be in trouble after all:

If you are on disability, you are not considered to be in the labor force either. As of April, we have added 5.5 million people to the disability rolls since the beginning of 2009, several million above the previous trend. There are now roughly 9 million people on disability. In 1992, there was one person on disability for every 35 workers. It is now about one for every 16 workers. It is hard to believe that so many people have become disabled; disability has literally become another fallback position for people out of work. If disability had stayed at the pre-recession growth rate, unemployment would be at least one percentage point higher, leading to a true unemployment rate much closer to 10 percent and perhaps significantly more.

Underemployment is still in the range of 16 percent, and that does not count people who have a job for which they are overqualified or who are making much less money because they are aren't working in their chosen field. John Williams at Shadowstats, who uses the U.S. government methodology from 30 years ago, tells us that the U-6 unemployment rate is around 23 percent. The difference is in how you create the model. The feds keep changing the rules, and it should be no surprise that with each new rule the number of people officially counted as unemployed drops. If you can't find a job, whether officially employed or not, you are still out of work. Far too many workers have been idle for extended periods, and it is crucial to get them back into the labor force before their skills atrophy and their earning power shrinks permanently.

And there's more:

Every president in modern times who has inherited a recession from his predecessor boasts a better track record. In fact, of the past 10 recessions, this has been the weakest recovery ever. And in the second quarter, GDP growth was down to 1.3 percent. And a slew of major hard data since the beginning of September have had to be revised sharply lower. Non-farm payrolls, retail sales, industrial production, and housing starts all received downward bumps, setting a stage for an even more sluggish performance in the third quarter. Durable goods orders in August served up another huge downward slide.

Indeed, the 1.3 reading on the second quarter GDP marks the weakest growth in the 12th quarter after a recession. By this time, at the same stage of a recovery, real GDP is expanding on average at 4.7 percent. That is after four years of $1 trillion plus fiscal deficits. Orders plunged to 13.2 percent sequentially during August, far exceeding the market expectations for a 5 percent decline.

There's a lot more at the link. It's worth your time.