More people go on disability than join the workforce in June

When Obama passed the Stimulus Package in 2009 to bailout the banks that were “to big to fail”, he claimed that by this point in 2012 the unemployment rate would already be back down to 5.6%. That figure is roughly 3% lower than the current unemployment rate but while job creation is lousy under the Obama administration, the number of people on disability has skyrocketed. Investor’s Business Daily reports on this trend:

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 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 jobs created during the sluggish recovery. (Even after accounting for people who left the disability program because they died or aged into retirement, 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.

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