Where is the stimulus? unemployment up

This is an unfair question with government passing the legislation less than six months ago, but then the hype about creating jobs immediately for a back-loaded program was also hype. 

The non-farm payroll numbers came out worse than expected and any tonic that we are on a better path has been eliminated. We have had 18 months of job losses and a doubling of the unemployment rate in the same amount of time. The only positive is a stabilization of initial jobless claims and continuing claims albeit the levels are extremely high. The slight increase in factory orders was positive but there was an equal decline in the revisions from last month. There are no green shoots here. 

The long history in the short shows a deep decline in employment and the consistent behavior over the last few recessions of slow recovery. The natural forces have been for declines and muted recovery. The stimulus may help quicken the recovery but the size is deeper. Unfortunately, the current unemployment rate is higher than what was predicted by the administration both with and without stimulus. It is the economy, stupid, yet the focus seems to be in many other areas.

We are seeing scared consumers that understand the economy is weak. They have been taking whatever benefit from tax cuts and saving most of it to pay-down debt. The multiplier is much weaker than expected. The wealth effect can work in both directions. Increased housing wealth that was liquefied for consumption is now being reversed. There may be little that can be done with changing consumer behavior in the short-run.