The U.S. jobs numbers were published today and the number are as the Washington Post noted “blech”.  While the national unemployment ticked down .1 percent, job creation stalled out as the economy added just 148,000 new jobs in September.  While the overall unemployment ticked down, the overall labor force participation numbers remained at near 35-year lows.  According to CNBC, economists had been expecting a relative boom of 180,000 jobs.

The Denver Post ran an AP article that was quick to point to the government shutdown for the lackluster results, despite the fact that the government shutdown began after the end of the reporting period. The Washington Post‘s Neil Irwin firmly denounced this idea:

“In other words, there’s every reason to think this should have been a good year for the American economy. Yet here we are back in the doldrums, experiencing the same ambling pace of recovery that has been all too common since the technical end of the Great Recession in the summer of 2009. Americans can probably look to Washington to assign blame — and that’s before the tumultuous last few weeks exact whatever toll they will exact on growth.”

Irwin also went through every possible scenario for the sluggish results – except one – the possibility that small businesses are looking at increased taxes and regulation.  He considered the impact of not slowing quantitative easing by the Fed, sequestration, and the government shut down.  He finally settled on sequestration.  Irwin is clearly living in some of Washington, D.C. insider bubble in which nothing exists unless the government provides it.

Perhaps the media should shadow a small business owner for a week to understand the great risk involved in growing.  Colorado’s commitment to raising taxes doesn’t help either since 95% of Colorado’s small businesses pay taxes as individuals.  Amendment 66, the billion dollar tax hike, is yet another Democratic initiative that will stunt the economic growth in Colorado.