Obama fights for credit as unemployment rate hits new low

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/obama-unemployment-rate-economy-credit/index.html The president ran a well deserved victory lap today in the face of the most obstructionist Republican Congress in U.S. history. Going from a 10% unemployment rate to 4.9%, in the face of the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, that was caused by Republican policies, this president has done the unthinkable. Think about this for a moment; this president inaugurated in January 09, while Republicans in a secret dinner party vowed to say no to everything he tried to do to improve the country, we were losing approximately 800,000 jobs a month sitting on 10% unemployment after a few months in to his presidency, and with overwhelming odds, pulled off an unthinkable task. And this feat was accomplished with 100% Republican obstructionism. That is the part I still cannot rap my head around. Can you imagine what the rate would be if he Right had given the president just a little cooperation? Hats off to you Mr. President, and thank you for bringing back hope into this country.

 

Our President is wonderful. This 4.9% unemployment rate should be touted by the Democrats so the voters will know which is the correct Party to vote for come November.

 

yeah sure and that

hamburger flipping obama job creator
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1/27/1360521/-Low-wage-jobs-are-taking-over-the-American-economy

 

will he be taking a victory lap for the median income levels at record lows in the past decade?

this becomes the basic quality vs quantity argument... great, we created a lot of low wage jobs, how are we better off when people need two of them now?

I mean basically unemployment goes down, but median income continues sideways... is that really something to take a victory lap for?



just saying, I could cherry pick stats and make any president looks like the most amazing, even those who had terrible results, this is nothing more than cherry picking... I'm not suggesting he wasn't at an extreme disadvantage coming in, I'm very realistic about what he inherited, but I also don't pretend to excuse his clear failures...

 

Don't you think your chart is a just a little outdated? February 2013 was three years ago after all.

 

absolutely it was outdated, it was the first one that popped up... thanks for providing an updated one that shows the same point I am making... we're not better off than before... we're still below where we once were, 16 years later... a total of 16 years of complete and utter failure, Bush and Obama... we can't afford 4 more of either...

P.S. think of it this way, Bush and Obama each added 10 trillion of debt, and after 16 years we're no better off than we were... in fact we're 20 trillion dollars worse...

P.S.S. in fact to expand upon your chart, they actually have a second chart thats more realistic and explains things better, check their PDF report, on page 11... it goes to show the length people are unemployed by, which is still horrific... and on page 12 they have a chart showing those unemployed and part-time... still way above 2000...

http://sentierresearch.com/reports/Sentier_Household_Income_Trends_Report_November2015_12_29_15.pdf

 

they really should. in every stop democrats must tell average americans attending their rallies that they are doing better than ever!

 

We'll, why don't you invite those job creators Bush was talking about back, who ended up taking the jobs over seas and their tax cuts/ wealth to the Cayman Islands and come back to the U.S.A.? Can't do that you say? Okay! Then good riddance! We're back to square one with good old progressive policies that Roosevelt started with. Except this time, you want skin in the game, no more tax cuts so you can (*)(*)(*)(*) our money away over seas where it only benefits the few. That's the economy this country needs, because it's the only economy that works for the people.

 

so not only did we hire more people in January, but the percentage of people in the workforce also went up.

those are all good signs.

we are NOT in a recession.

 

The last time our economy tanked this bad was in 1929. How long did it take to recover then and how much debt did we have compared to GDP?

 

well we could have quite the debate about recessions... lets review the wikipedia of recessions!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States

it would appear our economy has tanked in the "early 80's" just as bad as we recently went through, with an almost identical recovery time... one could even argue it was actually worse than that since the previous recession prior to that was only one year in difference... you could almost say it was one long recession, although not "technical"... and prior to those two recessions back to back, you had one only 3 years prior that was just as horrific and long lasting as this last one... so in a 9 year period from 1973 to 1982 you had 3 recessions... totaling 3.5 years of recovery... I mean its remarkable we're even all still alive and didn't press the nuclear button hey... thats in stark contrast to the 10 years period where we had one recession for 1.5 years of recovery...

now as a percent to GDP, its roughly half of what we went through if I recall, but recession after recession after recession, yet we still churned through it quickly and at far less cost... why... because we didn't bail everyone out and keep funding losing wars... but we bailed everyone out and we continue to this day to fund losing wars... why on earth are we still doing this... we couldn't have two candidates that are more polar opposite, yet they both continued down the same awful trail of loss... why?

P.S. basically, we have learned NOTHING since vietnam... we didn't learn from that war, we didn't learn from that economy, we've learned NOTHING... we repeated it... and we continue to repeat it today... thats screwed up...

P.S.S. sorry I kinda got sidetracked there... here is an image showing GDP by recession to answer part of your question...



and uhhh I guess we already covered recovery times... so GDP vs recovery times... we've had two examples I discussed several decades ago...

 

Pundits worry about percentages. People worry about what they see going on in their community around them. If there are lots of jobs, 4.9% is wonderful. If a local factory just announced layoffs or closing, 4.9% is meaningless.

 

It's easy to have a low percentage unemployment when you purposely don't count 100 million people that aren't working.

 

Thank you Obama for shifting so many Americans to being "out of the workforce" that an 8.5% unemployment can be made to look 4.9%

Oh THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU OBAMA !!!!

 

If anyone has touted the income inequality and the low median incomes it's been me on this forum. You didn't discover America. I've shown the Vulture chart on here dozens and dozens of times for income inequality. Most people today don't realize it, but we are still suffering under some of the same Bush tax cut policies for the wealthy. We are still under the umbrella of Reaganomics, which suppresses wages and incomes. This has been and still is the heart of the problem. Yes, Obama has worked masterfully at creating jobs, but as long as we let the wealthy off the hook with tax loop holes and tax cuts, while letting them continue this crusade of hijacking the middle class by promoting the lie that 80 to 90% is too high, when it was proven it wasn't, then we can't do much more than that. Obama for the most part, accomplished his end of the equation. And with a Republican lead Congress hell bent on continually massaging the rich with Reaganomics, Obama is kind of stuck doing the best he can. We need to get back to the days that Roosevelt started and Eisenhower enjoyed. And Eisenhower was a Republican president who must have understood the value of a tax rate that looked out for the middle class. Folks, this isn't rocket science. Let's stop acting like it is

 

only 16%

compaired to 100% now

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/a/National-Debt-by-Year.htm
so a crash like 1929 would be really bad now..

 

hillary needs to bring this up at every opportunity. Why are you guys supporting bernie? Were doing great we only have 4.9% unemployment. Thats like full employment! We probably wont even need welfare soon since everyone is employed.

 

Yeah, but … come on … !!! -- if we instead had elected McCain/Palin and/or Romney/What's*his*name, I'm sure that unemployment would be 0.02% at most, and the average family in America would be earning a million bucks a week ...

 

we were just discussing the median incomes of americans in another thread while looking at cost of living to determine which states are the least expensive... so I can confirm america has been in a long sideways slide when we look at median income levels... let me see if I can find the chart, showing the vast comparison between GDP and median incomes, to show just how long this problem has existed and grown in america... I know its here someplace...



there we go... so we can see going all the way back to the mid 1970's americans have gained little in terms of median wealth... while almost every discussion people have on this subject discusses the GDP rates... and people assume that means the average american is successful, so they talk about GDP to brag about how well economies did under their presidency, when in fact we SHOULD for the past 40 years I guess been talking about median income levels... which is a more accurate measure of "average" americans... I mean median is nothing more than an equal number of people above and below that point, so it stands to reason its our middle of america...

its just shocking to see the vast different levels of which political party controlled congress and the presidency since the 1970's... and how its resulted in little benefit... mostly because we've always been discussing the wrong numbers, and putting the emphasis on the wrong data sets... GDP is great if you're at the top, its almost pointless to most americans... its just shocking the more data sets I see reviewed on this website, how wrong many of the discussions are in showing whats a success...



P.S. found another chart above, this one seems a little easier for folks to read and understand than the first one...

P.S.S. but please stop trying to defend Obama... he made the wealthy people even wealthier with the methods they used for bailouts and propping up the GDP... only now are people worried once reality is being put back in place and the stock market might finally come back down a little after being artificially inflated for years now... democrats gave millionaires and billionaires an absolute sweetheart deal with the bailouts... they should have let every company go bankrupt and erase that wealth, not prop it up and expand it... that was a shame when they had a chance to do what they should have done... (basically what romney said ironic enough, ding the rich)

 

Thanks to the Republican congress for backing this economy out of the ditch and guiding it in the right direction.

 

so if everyone is employed, why are more people on welfare than before? don't those two things contradict each other? more employed, and more receiving welfare?

P.S. clearly there is a disconnect with the logic and premise... either we're doing better than before and less should be on welfare, or we're not which explains why more have it?

 

obviously its the people fault. what democrats are saying is that our admistraton is so good that were in full employment. IF you cant get a job in an economy with full employment then its kinda your fault already.

Go hillary! This news needs to be in every democrat speech. woohoo full employment!

 

Lol! I'm tickled every time the Right tries to play up this lame sort of elementary game to try and trick people into believing no one understands common logic but them. Kind of cute, but it does get old. Instead of 100 million, why not make it 200 million? Better yet, let's make it 300 million. Sound good? Okay, now we can play numbers. Are you ready? This might be hard so pay attention okay? If you had 300 million in the workforce at the time of the Great Recession, and suddenly 100 million out of the 300 million left the work force, there would be 200 million left trying to find a job right? Guess what, the 200 million become the new figure and the 100 million are irrelevant, because they no longer are counting themselves. And here's the neat part, Obama never told the 100 million to get out of the workforce. They did that on their own. So the percentage is based on the 200 million, not 300 million. And here's another neat thing most people haven't thought about. Have you traveled across the country lately and paid attention to who was working construction by the millions? Do I need to tell you? Probably not! If we were counting illegals taking the place of those who gave up, you'd probably be looking at one to two percent unemployment. So here's my point about that. The 100 million who got out; they probably could have gotten a job, but they wanted better jobs and better paying jobs like they had. And guess what, I don't blame them. But Republican policies destroyed millions of good paying jobs when the Great Recession hit, and many of these folks sadly gave up. So there you go. Now you understand how the 4.9% is a legitimate figure, and Obama deserves that credit.

 

So much for the victory lap.

 

wouldn't it be better if we had 1-2% unemployment so we could put pressure on wages to lift the median income levels... rather than subsidize the income of illegals who are not citizens of this country? I mean thats why we created social security back in the day when we had the same levels of unemployment among some sectors... youth, black males, etc etc... it was to remove people from the workforce to create an artificial labor shortage that would not just get people jobs, but would put dramatic pressure to lift wages as there were not enough warm bodies to fill the jobs and companies had to offer better wages or benefits in order to attract and retain those employees?

shouldn't we put americans first once again, and create that labor shortage once again, to create a rise in wages and median incomes for americans?

or do you want to put 10-30 million illegals first and keep wages depressed? I dunno I've never gotten anyone to give me a straight and honest answer, they just think it will all magically work out if we make them legal... if we make them legal, they'll have further mobility in the workplace to drive existing wages down as they flood the job market with better wages than the lower under the table wages they often receive in those construction jobs... imagine if builders could hire them legally above the table, and pay them $10 an hour instead of the $20 or more union guys in many instances... I mean if they're already building the buildings clearly they're just as good right? so what would happen to the median income of americans if we legalized them and put them in direct competition for all of our jobs, rather than just the few scrupulous companies that are willing to take the risk in hiring illegals or subcontractors they know are questionable to a high degree...

seriously... it'll be devastating for black america and youth if we legalize 10-30 million illegals who can now directly compete with them at every job... I wouldn't want to live in large urban centers after that, it will be horrific when 50% unemployment rates among black males rises to 75% or more... and what will the youth do?