Jobs numbers out again, and again, the numbers are terrible.  Only 36,000 jobs added in January, when 300,000 jobs a month for the next five years are needed to just return to employment numbers that existed prior to 2008. 

But given the stupidity deliberate myopia emanating from a corporate controlled White House and Capitol Hill, it's no surprise.

Dave Johnson at Our Future weighs in: "Today's monthly jobs report was odd. There were few new jobs, but the unemplopyment rate dropped again as even more people gave up looking for work.

"This month they blame the weather for the lack of government action on job-creation or helping state and local governments prevent layoffs, infrastructure modernization, trade-policy adjustment, Wall Street-predation, income inequality and other things causing the jobs crisis,

"Calculated Risk also says,

The 36,000 payroll jobs added was far below expectations of 150,000 jobs, however this was probably impacted by bad weather during the survey reference period. If so, there should be a strong bounce back in the February report. 

"Even More People Gave Up Looking

"LA Times, Unemployment falls to 9% but job growth remains sluggish,"

Meanwhile, as Ben Bernanke plays Little Mary Sunshine, economist Robert Reich has a more sobering view of the jobs report and the US two-tier economy.

"The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in the population of Americans wanting and needing work. And 300,000 a month are needed — continuously, for five years — if we’re to get back to anything like the employment we had before the Great Recession.

"In other words, today’s employment report should be sending alarm bells all over official Washington....(Technical note: The official rate of unemployment fell to 9 percent from 9.4 percent, but that’s because more workers have left the labor market, too discouraged to continue looking for work. The official rate reflects how many people are actively looking for work.)

"The first is a professional, college-educated, high-wage economy centered in New York and Washington, that’s living well off of global corporate profits. Corporations continue to make money by selling abroad from their foreign operations while cutting costs (especially labor) here at home. Wall Street is making money by taking the Fed’s free money and speculating with it. The richest 10 percent of Americans, holding 90 percent of all financial assets, are riding the wave. And their upscale spending has given high-end retailers and producers a bounce.

"The second is most of the rest of America, and it’s still struggling with a mountain of debt, declining home prices, and job losses. In coming months most Americans will also be contending with sharply rising prices of food and fuel.

"Our representatives in Washington see and hear mostly the first economy.

"Without a strong and broadly-based middle-class recovery, America’s big money economy will fall in on itself. A major stock market “correction” is a certainty."

Meanwhile, the corporatist White House and Congress are charging ahead with their dunderheaded austerity plans which will inflict even more suffering on regular Americans, while the wealth few get richer.

As Digby wrote:  "Gosh, I sure they can find common ground with the president on this [austerity] because it's working out so well everywhere else it's been tried:"

" 'Fiscal austerity has already been started in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, and this seems to be pushing all of them back into recession. Over the last four quarters, growth in Greece was negative and falling, and bond investors are once more demanding sky-high returns to compensate their risk. The excuse in these countries was that they have little choice because they are stuck in the European monetary union and don’t have the ability to depreciate their exchange rate.

" 'The U.K. may be a purer case of the harm austerity at the wrong time can inflict.' "

"Democrats who sign on to this are being useful idiots for the conservatives and very useful servants for the wealthy."