-------------------------------------------------------------------------


By FRED BARNES
President Obama talks, talks, talks about jobs. The first 20 minutes of his State of the Union address in January was all about jobs. Immigration reform would “create jobs for everybody,” he said. His energy policy “is creating jobs.” Obama said he’s assigned Vice President Biden to make sure training programs match workers with “good jobs that need to be filled right now.” Last week he described his new budget as “a road map for creating jobs.”
Yet for all the talk, his record on jobs is pathetic. It raises this question: Does the president have a clue about what creates jobs and what kills jobs? Based on the evidence from his five years as president, the answer is no, he doesn’t.
Consider that record. Obama boasts that 8 million new jobs have been created on his watch. But rather than an achievement, this marks the slowest economic recovery in decades. There are 1.2 million fewer jobs today than in 2007 when the recession began. The 6.6 percent unemployment rate would rise to 13 percent if participation in the workforce were the same now as when the downturn began. The labor force participation rate—the percentage of those able to work who actually have jobs or are looking for jobs—is the lowest it’s been since the late 1970s. And 18 percent of those employed have part-time jobs.