Job creation ground to a halt in August, and the U.S. is now clearly sputtering toward a recession. Downward revisions to prior months make this bad report worse than it seems.
It might be that this jobs report stimulates the Obama team to drop all the Keynesian nonsense, but I doubt it. Frankly, I expect Obama’s jobs speech to be the worst presidential speech in my lifetime. Their position throughout this recovery has been that the U.S. can have the highest corporate tax on earth, a big regulatory crackdown, and a vast expansion of labor-union power, and still expect a positive jobs story because of cash-for-clunkers and green jobs. This jobs report indicates how much damage that view has done.
— Kevin A. Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.