Just four days before Election Day the last jobs report of the campaign was released indicating an increase in the unemployment rate to 7.9 percent. The report detailed 171,000 new jobs created at the same time that the number of unemployed grew by 170,000.
While the president will try to argue that the economy is technically growing the report provides new ammunition to Mitt Romney to counter that job growth is so pathetic that the unemployment problem isn’t improving.
At a rally in Wisconsin Friday afternoon Romney said, “That’s 9 million jobs short of what he promised. Unemployment is higher today than when Barack Obama took office.”
When President Obama took office the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent.
“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill. When I’m president, I’m going to make real changes that lead to a real recovery, so that the next four years are better than the last,” Romney said in a written statement.
Former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Keith Hall remarked that at this rate, “we’re still talking nine or 10 years” before the economy gets back to normal.
Meanwhile Mr. Obama to a crowd in Hilliard, Ohio claimed the report was another sign that the economy is moving in the right direction, despite the challenges remaining.
“We’ve made real progress, but we are here today because we know we’ve got more work to do,” Obama said. “As long as there’s a single American who wants a job and can’t find one, as long as there are families working harder but falling behind our fight goes on.”
The economy still cannot to grow at a rate that will substantially alter the long-term unemployment crisis, but Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, claimed “today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”
Many feel the September jobs report was suspect, showing the unemployment rate dropping to 7.8 percent as job creation during the reporting period would not produce a three tenths drop in unemployment; the last-minute dip below eight percent unemployment when growth has been sluggish throughout the year and coming close to the election has many believing the books were cooked by the Obama Administration.
Friday’s report will be the last major economic news before Election Day so it will now be the judgment of the American people as whether the trend is sufficiently promising to warrant giving Mr. Obama another four years. Hopefully when people enter the voting booth they’ll recall that Mr. Obama said shortly after taking office that failing to right the economy in three years would mean a “one-term proposition.”
While the economy has remained stagnant throughout his presidency and his anti-business approach has depressed growth suddenly Mr. Obama got economic religion and called for a new cabinet department with all the government spending that goes hand-in-hand with additional bureaucracy; Obama called his new cabinet position the Department of Business.
“I just don’t think another cabinet chair is going to create the jobs that America needs,” Romney said in Doswell,Va., part of a daylong swing through the battleground state.
There is one place where unemployment won’t be problem in a second Obama administration and that’s the federal government.
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