An economist at the Heritage Foundation warns that due to several Obama administration policies, the nation is several months away from the labor market turning positive.
The U.S. economy lost 190,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment rate reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, climbing up from the 9.8 percent unemployment rate in September. Rea Hederman, senior policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, says that although he expected the unemployment rate to climb, he was surprised it increased so much while Americans were leaving the labor force. "Normally the unemployment rate jumps at the end of recession as more Americans start coming back into the labor market, now thinking they can find a job," he explains. "So that indicates to me that unfortunately, the unemployment rate is going to go a lot higher than the 10.2 percent number." Hederman believes that enacting a new government-run health insurance program will put an additional chill on the current hiring freeze. "Businesses will no longer be able to anticipate how much employees are going to cost next year. [When] you combine healthcare with some other mandated government policies, ranging from climate change to the expiration of President Bush's tax cuts, you really have a very unfriendly business environment being created by Washington," the analyst reports. "And that's one of the reasons that we've seen the employment hiring situation frozen." Hederman says that instead of stabilizing the labor market, President Obama's economic stimulus package has increased national debt and federal spending.
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