Disability rolls growing faster than new jobs in Obama’s economy

This is stunning and might be the best indicator of where we really are in Obama’s economy. I mean, they say we need x amount of jobs just to outpace population growth but in Obama’s economy we can’t even grow enough jobs to outpace people signing up for disability:

INVESTORS – More workers joined the federal government’s disability program in June than got new jobs, according to two new government reports, a clear indicator of how bleak the nation’s jobs picture is after three full years of economic recovery.

The economy created just 80,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But that same month, 85,000 workers left the workforce entirely to enroll in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, according to the Social Security Administration.

The disability ranks have outpaced job growth throughout President Obama’s economic recovery. While the economy has created 2.6 million jobs since June 2009, fully 3.1 million workers signed up for disability benefits.

In other words, the number of new disability enrollees has climbed 19% faster than the number of new jobs created during the sluggish recovery. (Even after accounting for people who left the disability program because they died or aged into retirement, the disability ranks have climbed more than 1.1 million in the past three years.)

And the disability ranks will continue to swell. In just the last month, almost 275,000 put in applications for disability benefits. Experts say that more people try to get on disability when jobs are scarce, and changes to eligibility rules enacted back in 1984 have made it far easier to qualify.

In addition, while job growth has been very weak during the recovery, the total number of people who’ve dropped out of the labor force entirely has exploded, climbing 7.3 million since June 2009, an IBD analysis of BLS data show. Some of them aged into retirement, but most either signed up for disability, stayed in school, moved back in with parents, or just quit looking for a job.

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