Unemployment Rate Rises, Average Hourly Earnings Continues To Plummet
The unemployment rate rose slightly today in a pretty lackluster jobs report, but some are still reporting a “steadily advancing recovery.”
The US unemployment rate rose slightly last month, but remained below 8 percent, as US employers added jobs for the 25th consecutive month, signs of a slow but steadily advancing recovery just days before voters head to the polls in a election that has hinged on their views of the economy.
In its last report before the election, the Labor Department estimated the unemployment rate at 7.9 percent, up from 7.8 percent in September, and employers added 171,000 jobs. In addition, the Labor Department said, the nation added about 84,000 more jobs in the September and August that previously estimated, another indication that the labor market has accelerated since the spring, when job growth nearly stalled.
The idea of a recovery is a little hard to believe given some of the other economic metrics available. “We are now 41 months into the recovery, and we have recovered just 55% of the 8.9 million lost private sector jobs from the Great Recession,” writes Jim Pethokoukis who also notes that the Obama administration predicted that, after the stimulus spending, America would be at 5.2% unemployment in October of 2012. Obviously, we haven’t hit that.
Here’s the Obama administration’s chart showing their projections both with and without the stimulus, updated to show what actually happened:
Average hourly wages are still in the toilet, too:
America’s economy continues to stagnate. Obama’s economic policies have failed. It’s time to try something different.
Tags: Barack Obama, Economy, jobs
