By John W. Lillpop
America’s decline into a haven for those seeking income without the inconvenience of working gained momentum in March as the Obama Recovery continues to sputter and spin in the wrong direction.
Adding to the Obama-chaos, a most ominious sign surfaced: The number of people signing up for permanent disability nearly equaled the number of those who found gainful employment during March.
This disconcerting news was reported at the reference thusly:
Almost as many people signed up with the federal government's permanent worker disability program as got jobs in March, according to two sets of government data, continuing a troubling trend throughout the Obama recovery.Even more depressing, the number of Americans on disability is in addition to the nearly 50 million that are on food stamps, a number that has reached epedemic proportions since Barack Obama took office.
Last month, 81,804 workers left the workforce to join the Social Security Disability Insurance program. So far this year, nearly a quarter million workers have joined the program.
Over the past four years, 4 million left the workforce to go on disability. Even after accounting for those who dropped out of the program because of death or retirement, the ranks of the disabled have shot up more than 1.4 million under Obama.
Today, the ranks of the disabled number 8.8 million, and when you add in children and spouses, the number climbs to 10.9 million.
Economists generally agree that the anemic recovery under President Obama has driven legions of workers who have been unable to find work to seek out the SSDI program.
"When opportunities for employment are plentiful, some people who could quality for (disability insurance) benefits find working more attractive," the Congressional Budget Office noted in a recent report on the program, adding that "when employment opportunities are scarce, some of these people participate in the DI program instead."
Since the recovery officially started in June 2009, more than 9 million have dropped out of the labor force, either because they retired, gave up looking for work, or signed up with a program like SSDI. This year alone, the number of people who aren't in the labor force shot up 959,000.
As a result, the labor force participation rate, which measures the number of people working or actively looking to the entire working age population, has fallen to 63.3%, from 65.7% at the start of the Obama recovery. That's the lowest level for this indicator since 1978.
The concern about so many signing up for disability is that almost none ever end up returning to the workforce. It's a problem the even the White House has expressed concern about.
In an economic report issued in 2011 the administration noted because "workers on SSDI rarely return to the labor force," this can result "in a loss to society of the economic contribution those workers could have made."
Thus, the Obama economy kills millions of jobs with higher taxes and reckless spending, and then aggravates the problem further by adding millions of the people it has displaced to the public dole through food stamps and disability!
ObamaNomics: A self-perpetuating cycle of economic ruin!
One last dreadful thought: As bad as the numbers are, the devastation can only grow worse as the Marxist poison known as ObamaCare becomes a reality.
When will this abuse of the American people end?
http://news.investors.com/economy/040513-650781-disability-surges-under-obama.htm#ixzz2PbHlueZA
