THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW

America's Slow Recovery New unemployment figures came out today.  Despite what Washington wants us to believe, our economy is far from strong and millions of Americans are suffering. In the month of May, more people entered the job market to look for work.  This is the main driver behind the slight uptick in the unemployment rate to 5.5% from 5.4%.   People looking for work is a good sign, but our labor force participation rate is still painfully low.  It increased to 62.9% from 62.8%, but that is still near a record low.  The last time the rate was below 63% was 37 years ago in 1978.   To put it into perspective, the rate was 65.7% when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. If you will recall, in April of this year, we hit a record high in terms of the number of Americans not in the labor force: 93.1 million.  In May, that number declined, but only slightly, to 92.9 million Americans not in the labor force. This includes about 56 million women who are no longer in the labor force, though the number declined slightly in the month of may. What this means is that millions of Americans have simply given up looking for work under this administration. It's Not Just Unemployment It's not just unemployment that impacts Americans, now we have the issue of underemployment.  More and more Americans are working part-time, but this is not by choice: "Another 72,000 workers were working part time last month because their hours were cut or they couldn't find full-time work," according to CNS News' analysis of the latest BLS figures. The bottom line is that real Americans haven't recovered in the way that Washington is able to make it look on paper. In fact, recent Fox News polling shows that 60% of Americans believe the country is still in a recession.  Through that figure has fallen since 2010, it is still indicative of how Americans perceive the strength of our economy and the opportunities available to them. In fact, it's no secret that American job growth hasn't necessarily meant wage growth in this Obama recovery.   The Wall Street Journal recently conducted an analysis which found something startling: Just 33 American metropolitan cities have recovered from the recession.  You can take a look at the list here.  Even in these "recovered cities" however, the lack of wage growth is "a sign that something remains amiss even in the nation's healthiest cities."