The "Summer of Recovery", One Year Later

What Happened to the White House's "Summer of Recovery"?
By Elizabeth MacDonald

The smartest guys in the room here are the ones who do our statistical research for us at FOX News and FOX Business. Stephen Joachim is one of them. He regularly analyzes reams of data from the U.S. government and elsewhere.

This is what he found out about "the Summer of Recovery" that really never was:

June 17, 2010 -- The White House declares: "This summer is sure to be a Summer of Economic Recovery"

Summer 2010 -- Summer of Job Losses

"The point of my talking to you today is that, although more people are going to be put to work this summer" -- Vice President Joe Biden, June 17, 2010. The job losses came in as follows, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

June: -192,000
July: -49,000
August: -59,000
September: -29,000

Job Creation

"The pace on the ball continues to increase, not decrease, as the Act rolls out in the final -- or this final summer." -- VP Biden, June 17, 2010
* Yes, the economy has added jobs since this statement, but at an average of 72,500 per month over the past 12 months. If this "pace on the ball" as Biden talked about continues.... it will take 93 months [nearly 8 years] to make up the jobs lost since the recession began in Dec 2007.

A Year Later .....

* The country is still plagued by high unemployment (9.1%) and even higher underemployment (15.8%, BLS // 18.6%, Gallup)
* May 2011: Unemployment increases for the second consecutive month
* May 2011: Overall consumer spending drops for the first time in 11 months
* May 2011: New-home construction rose to adjusted annual rate of 560,000 units per year---but still far below the 1.2 million new homes per year that Economists say is needed to sustain a healthy housing market
* Applications for new weekly unemployment benefits have average 434,792 since last summer
* Consumer prices for all goods have increased each month since June 2010
* Cost of food for a family of four, on average, up 5% since last summer
* 6.2 million Americans have been unemployed for 6 months or longer
* Nearly 1 of every 3 people unemployed have been out of work for more than 1 year
* About 25 of mortgage holders nationwide are now underwater -- owe more than their homes are worth
* GDP revised down to a disappointing annual rate increase of 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011, (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.