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The Spectacle Blog
The national unemployment rate for July rose 0.1% to 8.3%. We have now gone 42 consecutive months with an unemployment rate of 8% or higher.
On the surface, this wouldn’t be good news for President Obama. Indeed, a little over a year ago I made the case that the unemployment numbers could cost Obama his job.
At the time I wrote the article, the national unemployment rate was 9.2%. Obviously, that figure has gone down but that owes more to people dropping out of the labor force than any marked economic improvement. Labor force participation is down to 63.7%.
Yet these numbers could actually benefit Obama. If we look at the monthly unemployment rates from January to July, it has ranged between 8.0 & 8.3%. While these numbers are nothing to boast about one could make the argument that the unemployment rate is stabilizing. Things might not be getting better but they are not getting worse. If a critical number of voters think things aren’t going to get worse with Obama then he will have another four years of him in office. Assuming the unemployment numbers for August, September and October (assuming those numbers will be released the Friday before the election) are in that range it could bolster Obama’s chances.
Which is why it is incumbent upon Mitt Romney to not only convince voters that life won’t get better under Obama but that things will only improve if they elect him instead. His response to the unemployment numbers is okay but needs to be more vigorous. He has said that he will create 12 million new jobs in his first term in office. But he needs to present voters with a stark choice. Romney needs to say something along the lines of, “Do you want another four years of unemployment of 8% or higher under President Obama or do you want twelve million new jobs under President Romney? Do you want to merely survive under President Obama or do you want to succeed under President Romney?”
President Obama is counting on a complacent electorate prepared to accept 8% unemployment as a fact of life. The challenge for Mitt Romney is to shake people out of that complacency and into action.
View all comments (7) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/08/03/do-the-unemployment-numbers-be
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lsudolemite| 8.3.12 @ 1:00PM
If a plurality of people truly believe that the best we can hope for as a nation is chronic unemployment, food stamp parties, and an ever-skyrocketing cost of living, then this isn't a nation worth preserving.
Mike G| 8.3.12 @ 2:23PM
""Do you want another four years of unemployment of 8% or higher under President Obama or do you want twelve million new jobs under President Romney?"
If the numbers stabilize, then Romney could give some prediction as to how many jobs would be created under Obama in the next four years, and compare that to his 12 million number. He could also make the comparison using the employment rate. What would the employment rate be (compared to 8%) if he created 12 million jobs? Sorry, but I think most voters aren't that smart and need this type of comparison to understand what he's saying about employment. Otherwise, they're just hearing numbers with no idea what the numbers mean.
Rifleman| 8.3.12 @ 4:17PM
The left wing media are already trying to condition the American people to accept 8% unemployment as "okay"...
Leonard Gilbert| 8.3.12 @ 6:12PM
Right along with $3.75 per gallon gasoline prices. Hopefully, some will thing too google.."2008 gas prices"...the day before they vote.
Leonard Gilbert| 8.3.12 @ 6:10PM
Sure the jobless numbers benefit President Clueless. He will be able to take "early retirement".
The rest of us are probably going to have to work until we drop dead.
Thom| 8.3.12 @ 6:41PM
The U3 rate has never been a number that means anything standing alone. 5% unemployment has always been considered the nominal “0” or baseline unemployment figure due to normal transitions in employment going back 100 years. Under normal economic conditions and job growth it would be true to say that only 3.3 % more people are unemployed than normal. No sane person would say that now because of all the other “stats” that reflect a participation rate well below the norm for seasonally adjusted rates in people leaving the work force voluntarily and not voluntarily plotted against the known number of job age people that should be entering the work force due to population growth. The true unemployment number isn’t something the BLS can track. If you don’t look for a “job” with an employer that reports it they can’t measure it. It can be inferred through the other U numbers and an understanding of that is beyond most voters’ attention span. Whatever the actual number is, when converted to the nominal average hours worked per week in normal times, it is much higher than 8%. Even the U6 can’t count that portion of the millions that graduate college each year or get HS diplomas and normally enter the work force at some level that don’t bother to apply for jobs and instead live with Mommy and Daddy a few more years or continue on in “school” at tax payer expense. You can’t draw unemployment if you were never employed in the first place….
Thom| 8.3.12 @ 6:52PM
To make matters worse, the largest portion of the population, the Baby Boomers are retiring and would alone create a larger number of job vacancies than normal going on for years that would boost the unemployment numbers. My company and the rest of Corporate American are consolidating jobs as Boomers retire rather than replace them one for one. The ever increasing cost of labor brought about by government regulations and mandates puts a premium on replacing an experienced worker with a skull full of mush with nearly the same total labor cost. Business will only hire what it can afford regardless of it needs for labor.