Jobless rate now a leading political indicator

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama speaks about jobs for vet­er­ans, Fri­day, at Hon­ey­well Automa­tion and Con­trol Solu­tions Global Head­quar­ters in Golden Val­ley, Minn. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Char­lie Neibergall)

JIM KUHNHENN

Asso­ci­ated Press

GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — The dis­cour­ag­ing new unem­ploy­ment num­bers present Pres­i­dent Barack Obama with a sober­ing reminder that an uneven recov­ery from the reces­sion can be a frag­ile argu­ment for his re-election. It’s all deep­en­ing his anx­i­ety over the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic threat posed by the Euro­pean debt crisis.

Ane­mic job growth and an uptick in job­less­ness to 8.2 per­cent also give new res­o­nance to Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial rival Mitt Romney’s cam­paign and put Obama on the defen­sive after a win­ter when the job trends were in his favor. Job growth now has been dis­ap­point­ing for three straight months, accen­tu­at­ing chal­lenges ahead for the president.

Obama, speak­ing about the econ­omy Fri­day in Min­nesota, kept up an opti­mistic front. While he said the lat­est jobs report indi­cated that the econ­omy was not grow­ing fast enough, he pre­dicted, “We will come back stronger; we do have bet­ter days ahead.”

Rom­ney called the fig­ures “dev­as­tat­ing news.”

The Repub­li­can said in an inter­view Fri­day with CNBC that Obama’s poli­cies and his han­dling of the econ­omy had “been dealt a harsh indictment.”

Shortly after the report was released, Obama was in Min­nesota to push his pro­posal to expand job oppor­tu­ni­ties for vet­er­ans and to raise money for his cam­paign. In the mean­time, the world anx­iously awaits the impact of the Euro­pean debt cri­sis, which could stall the recov­ery in the U.S.

“What we’re look­ing at is the longer-term trend,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters trav­el­ing with Obama. The econ­omy is still adding jobs, as it has for more than two years, Earnest said, “but it’s read­ily appar­ent that we’re not adding those jobs at a rapid enough pace.”

The unem­ploy­ment num­bers, while impre­cise and a typ­i­cally lag­ging indi­ca­tor of eco­nomic per­for­mance, are nev­er­the­less an unde­ni­able marker of the human cost of a weak economy.

May’s 69,000 new jobs and down­ward adjust­ments for March and April mean the econ­omy aver­aged just 73,000 jobs a month over the past two months. That’s half of what’s needed sim­ply to keep up with pop­u­la­tion growth and is a dra­matic drop from the 226,000 jobs cre­ated per month in the January-March quarter.

May’s 8.2 per­cent job­less rate, the first increase in 11 months, reflects more peo­ple com­ing back into the job force, a thin sil­ver lin­ing to an oth­er­wise dis­mal report

No pres­i­dent since the Great Depres­sion has sought re-election with unem­ploy­ment as high as that, and past incum­bents have lost when the unem­ploy­ment rate was on the rise.

Rom­ney wants this pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to be a ref­er­en­dum on Obama’s 3 1/2 years in office. Obama wants it to be a choice between two dis­tinct visions for the country.

Obama is count­ing on an unem­ploy­ment tra­jec­tory that has brought the rate from a high of 10 per­cent in Octo­ber 2009. The pres­i­dent likes to point to the 3.8 mil­lion jobs cre­ated since he became pres­i­dent, though 12.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans remain unem­ployed. He high­lights the resur­gence of the auto indus­try fol­low­ing gov­ern­ment bailouts of Chrysler and Gen­eral Motors.

Friday’s report seri­ously damp­ens Obama’s message.

The United States has expe­ri­enced peri­ods of jobs slow­down for the past three years, only to bounce back. Last year, from May to August, job growth aver­aged 80,000 a month and from June through Sep­tem­ber of 2010, the aver­age was 76,000. But Obama can’t afford a pro­longed period of fee­ble growth.

What’s more, this down­turn comes at a time of ele­vated worry over the eurozone’s debt and eco­nomic crises. The issue has con­sumed Obama’s time. It was the cen­tral sub­ject at an eco­nomic sum­mit with major pow­ers at Camp David last month and took up most of the time in a secure con­fer­ence call this week among Obama and the lead­ers of Ger­many, France and Italy.

Obama is push­ing Con­gress to enact sev­eral pro­pos­als designed to spur job growth and secure the hous­ing indus­try. “Con­gress has a respon­si­bil­ity here,” Earnest said.

At the same time, his cam­paign has mounted a step-by-step assault on Romney’s eco­nomic record, from his days as a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist to his tenure as Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor from 2003–2007.

The Obama cam­paign released a new online video Fri­day that fea­tures sev­eral of Romney’s for­mer Repub­li­can polit­i­cal foes, includ­ing Rick San­to­rum and Newt Gin­grich, crit­i­ciz­ing Romney’s eco­nomic record.

The cam­paign also said it would hold a series of con­fer­ence calls with reporters to dis­cuss Romney’s “fail­ure to ful­fill the eco­nomic promises he made” when he was run­ning for gov­er­nor of Massachusetts.

Rom­ney, now freed from his pri­mary con­tests, has aimed heav­ily at Obama’s eco­nomic poli­cies, argu­ing that they have slowed the recov­ery, not aided it. The Repub­li­can has empha­sized his back­ground in pri­vate busi­ness to argue that he’s qual­i­fied to lead a nation in eco­nomic turmoil.

On Fri­day, his cam­paign released a new tele­vi­sion ad promis­ing “a bet­ter day” and declar­ing that a Rom­ney pres­i­dency would focus from the start on the econ­omy and the deficit, unleash U.S. energy resources and stand up to China on trade.

“Pres­i­dent Romney’s lead­er­ship puts jobs first,” the ad states.

Obama could face the high­est unem­ploy­ment rate on Elec­tion Day of any pres­i­dent since Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt. But his aides argue that the trend line is more impor­tant than the actual num­ber. Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980 to Ronald Rea­gan as unem­ploy­ment climbed from 6 per­cent to 7.5 per­cent. George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clin­ton in 1992 as unem­ploy­ment rose from 6.9 per­cent to 7.6 percent.

But while Rea­gan faced unem­ploy­ment of 7.4 per­cent in Octo­ber 1984, the rate had been drop­ping since the spring of 1983. He went on to win re-election.

Obama can find some solace in unem­ploy­ment rates that have dropped sharply in sev­eral swing states. But those num­bers can be deceiv­ing and an employed voter is not nec­es­sar­ily an Obama voter.

A May Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll showed that 52 per­cent of those sur­veyed dis­ap­proved of Obama’s han­dling of the econ­omy while 46 per­cent approved.

Posted by AP News on Jun 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.