It’s as if some invisible hand is holding back our economic recovery, which has dragged on so long that people are forgetting just what created the need for recovery. Analysts were surely disappointed by August’s increase of just 142,000 jobs, as they were expecting well over 200,000 new hires during the month. The silver lining, as Robert Stein at National Review points out, is that later revisions have increased previous August numbers considerably, so we may yet reach the conventional-wisdom figure. Yet the slim job gains don’t account for the headline unemployment rate declining to 6.1%. That happened because of fewer workers in the overall labor market – twice as many people quit looking for jobs as found them, and labor participation fell once again to a modern low of 62.8%.

Whether you believe the 6.1% “official” number, the wider-focused 12% “U-6” unemployment figure that counts those who have given up looking for work, or the 23.2% unemployment figure the ShadowStats website comes up with by using pre-1994 criteria that includes more long-term discouraged workers, it’s still apparent that jobs are rather scarce and employers remain very picky. The average time to fill a vacant position is nearly 25 working days. By the same token, employees are afraid to leave their jobs to search for something better, with the “quit” rate still below pre-recession levels.

During this so-called recovery, government policy has been more heavy-handed than in previous efforts to revive and jumpstart the economy. While Barack Obama crows that “the American economy and American workers are better off since I took office,” he has presided over a decrease in median household income since his tenure began, according to the Census Bureau. Obama’s added trillions to the debt with failed “stimulus” programs and additional government assistance for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. All this has done, though, is consign more people to a meager existence, while the top 10% of wage-earners – often those who have a hand in writing government policy that suits their needs – saw a 10% increase in income from 2010-13. In short, while Obama drones incessantly about helping out the middle class, in reality he’s hollowing it out.

The solution seems rather obvious, but there are two groups who would prefer to see the status quo remain: the long-term poor, who generally have little in the way of working skills but outsized demands for giveaway wages, and the wealthy, who can count on governmental cronyism for a return on their tax dollars through federal funding of projects in which they’ve invested. While the former group has the votes to keep compliant politicians in place, the latter only needs elected officials to look the other way. Democrats talk a good game about helping the “middle class,” but they’re working against average Americans from both ends.