means a lot of you are out of the best opportunity for wealth creation right now. jobs market is improving. the u.s. economy added 236,000 jobs last month. the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. that s the lowest since december 2008. 4.8 million americans have been out of work for six months or longer. 8 million of you are working part time because you can t find a good full-time job. and the kind of jobs we are adding, well, they re not the same quality as jobs we lost. median household income is falling and expiration of the payroll tax holiday is squeezing middle class paychecks further. the prices for gas, groceries and college balloon. so this recovery may not be working for everyone. those that can afford a house are doing better than most. it begs the question. are we one america with two economies? former the new york times columnist bob herbert is here
employers added many more jobs than expected last month, 236,000 in all, experts had predicted about 170,000, that drops the unemployment rate to 7.7%, we re covering all the angles and how they impact your wallet. christine romans breaks down the numbers, dan lothian is at the white house with the political implications and alison kosik looks ahead at the ripples on wall street. christine first to you what is the big takeaway from the new numbers? the takeaway is the private sector is hiring again, the private sector is hiring and the government is laying off, 10,000 government sector jobs laid off in the month, most likely those were school related jobs, but the private sector has been hiring now for more than 30 some months and so you re seeing despite worries about gas prices, despite worries about the higher payroll tax holiday hurting consumers, some companies are feeling more confident. there were some tax season jobs and health care jobs and construction jobs, very interestin
think americans should be more concerned about the fact that personal income dropped 3.6% from december to january. that is big deal. also, we had the payroll tax holiday expire, so americans are giving up another 2% of their paycheck. if there is anything that americans have learned over the past four years, is how to make do with less. discretion ear spending has jumped 84% in the first two years since president obama took the oath 6 offers. there doesn t seem to be any sign that it is in a meaningful way going in the opposite direction. shouldn t that be a drag on the economy and on wall street? it is, but when you look at the amount of people that own our debt, we still better off than the rest of the world. what is happening, it s a vicious cycle where people continue to buy our debt and that exacerbates the problem. but a lot of americans you are turning their head.
taxes are at historic lows for about 16% of gdp. domestic discretionary spending is lower than it s been since 1962. so, you cannot cut your way spending cut your way out of this problem. if you want to attack the debt and deficit you have to have a combination of the two otherwise the math doesn t add up. brenda: gary b, let s do the math what the ending of the payroll tax holiday has done so far. is that evidence perhaps that we can t hike taxes more? well, i think you just saw it, brenda, with what s happening at wal-mart. they clearly stated that you know, that s their constituency, people that take home a paycheck, you know, every week or two weeks, saw that the payroll tax get hiked and what happened? wal-mart got slammed. they now, you know, i m sure there were other factors, but look, it s hitting that broad swath of quote, unquote, middle america that obama champions and rightly so, right where it hurts. so, any kind of tax hike at this point is going to, going to be deva
the failed to act. megyn: go ahead. right, it s not the fault, by the way of everybody s taxes going up 3%, from the end of the payroll tax holiday. it s not the fault of high gas prices, it s not the fault of the other weaknesses of the economy and it s the fault of the economy, i m talking to you, john boehner. the other thing that the president had to do today which was significant was admit, admit, not a big deal, not a big deal right now he had to basically say this could eventually be a big deal. after weeks, oh, my gosh, weeks and weeks and weeks of the worst, these cataclysmic scenarios, it s really not about this, it s a fight over spending levels the end of march, have a good weekend. megyn: we saw the first responders behind him. these people are going to lose their jobs and houses are going to burn. and illegals let out of prison, wait, that happened. (laughter) whoops. megyn: all of these things