Well, that’s pretty good news. The jobs number is good, if not spectacular. And importantly from a political perspective at least, the unemployment rate has dipped below 8% for the first time since President Obama’s first full month in office. The 0.3% drop confounded “experts,” who had expected an increase. And, importantly, the unemployment rate fell even though the number of people who gave up looking for work also declined. That is, the unemployment rate dropped because more people got jobs.
In addition, the jobs numbers from July and August were revised upward by 40,000 and 46,000 jobs respectively. So, as Ezra Klein observes, “we actually gained 181k jobs in July and 142k in Aug. The last few months have been way better than the initial numbers showed.” That might help explain what has confounded some pundits: if the economy is as bad as the numbers say, why does polling consistently show that people are feeling better about it? Maybe because the numbers were off.
So, Wednesday was a less than great day for the Obama campaign. Today should be much better.
So, should we ask them to concede the election now?
Imagine how much lower the percentage would be if the obstructionist Republicans didn’t block any and every jobs effort since the stimulus, including key state aid that could have prevented the layoffs of tens of thousands of cops, firemen and teachers.
We’d probably be under 7% and *almost* starting to get back to normal on the jobs percentage front.
here is one economist who opines that, indeed, the unemployment rate would be below 7% were it not for lost public-sector jobs.
One of the things I’ve been quite frustrated with is that the private sector job situation, while not great, is a lot better than it was in late 2008. But that success has been offset by public sector job losses almost entirely attributable to Republican obstruction and Obama’s willingness to compromise with them and shrink the size of government.
I said in February 2009 that they would fight tooth and nail to make the stimulus as small as possible, then use that “failure” to block any further stimulus and to make gains in 2010, thus making future progress before 2012 very difficult. And I was right.
I’m a bit of an anti-consumerist, but what the heck… want to help Obama? Go do your holiday shopping *now*. This weekend. Juice numbers a bit, and maybe they manage to show up in one last economic report before the election!
Give me a break. The report is suspicious at best. The Labor Department added Part Time jobs to the report. Obama and the Democrats are desperate and will try anything to win the election including fixing unemployment reports.
One report Obama and the Democrats are trying quash the news media on is the report that he is accepting campaign donations from overseas, which is illegal. Stay tuned it will be breaking soon.
Is that a change to prior reports? If so, were the prior reports updated to reflect a new counting method?
Or are you just throwing everything to the wall to see what will stick? The second (and remarkably unrelated) portion of your post seems to suggest exactly that.
in the counting method, for heaven’s sake. If there had, it would be front-page news all over the place.
Predictably, in light of today’s news, there has been an unfortunate outburst of “BLS Truthers” claiming that the jobs numbers are cooked. They are not, as numerous people who actually know what they’re talking about have tried patiently to explain. Sensible conservatives are desperately trying to get the loons to back off, realizing that it makes them look desperate.
Your BLS is cooking the numbers nonsense has been well-answered.
So I’ll just address this red herring:
#1, your statement here is false. The campaign finance law allows for the President and Romney to raise and accept money “from overseas”. They can and have held fundraisers in other countries. Where they have raised money from Americans who live overseas. The law bans foreigners from contributing to political campaigns, but American citizens (and green-card holders) can legally donate regardless of where they live. See e.g.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30/foreign-money-elections_n_1718545.html
#2, if what you really meant is that Obama has been raising money from non-Americans then you are simply reiterating the same right-wing blog nonsense that’s been floating around since at least 2008. The usual, “he allows untraceable prepaid credit card donations!” ridiculousness. The idea that the Obama campaign (or any campaign) would intentionally risk the hugely damaging legitimate news story of being funded by non-Americans for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions is absurd. The risk/reward calculation tells the rational person that this is almost certainly not happening at any scale.
There is a second unemployment number released that ads underemployment to the unemployment numbers, and that’s much worse than 7.8%. While probably a more accurate figure in determining the health and welfare of the country, that second figure is rarely ever featured in any headline or above-the-fold in any article.
Moreover, the jobs figures are calculated by nonpartisan members of the government, and can’t be tampered with by political appointees.
This latest BS attack is right up there with the President can’t be real or American, is foreign, and does terrorist fist-jabs. It was never pulled on Bill Clinton, George Bush or Ronald Reagan. It’s simply meant to de-legitimize the nation’s first black President.
Stop.
I know; I’m a retired astronaut.
Because all that is good for Democrats is bad for America. If Americans want jobs (says the Republican party), they should stop getting them, so that Republicans can get in office so they can get them.