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Improving job numbers a boost for Obama
U.S. President., Barack Obama
The promising drop in unemployment on Friday looks like a job-security bonus for President Barack Obama as well, undercutting Republicans’ assertions that his economic policies have failed. The president himself heralded the news with his most confident assessment yet.
“We’re starting to rebound,” he declared. “We’re moving in the right direction.”
It’s still 10 months until Election Day, and while the narrative is positive for Obama now, the economy could still turn sour again. The Republicans who want his job were giving him no credit on Friday, and Rick Santorum even suggested hiring was improving because business owners figured Obama was on his way out.
But December’s 8.5 percent jobless rate – down from 8.7 in November and 9 percent in October – gives Obama a positive story line through the Republican presidential primaries in January and underscores other bright spots emerging on the economic scene for his yearlong fight for re-election.
More good economic news: The average workweek lengthened, average hourly pay rose and the length of time people spent unemployed also declined. To some economists, the data indicated the economy was approaching “escape velocity” – the space age term to describe the ability of a recovery to sustain itself and break away from a recession’s gravitational pull.
As Obama’s potential rivals fight their way toward the Republican nomination by trying to distinguish themselves from each other and from Obama, the news on jobs dilutes a central theme of their candidacies – that Obama has failed to turn the economy around.
More Americans now expect the economy to improve this year than to get worse, according to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll. At the same time, Obama is being held more accountable for what happens.
Obama has been loath to crow about any positive economic indicators, and White House economists have repeatedly stressed they do not read much into a single month’s report.
So it was notable on Friday that the president, while offering the customary cautions, could barely contain his optimism. Three times during brief remarks to staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau he said the economy or the country was “moving in the right direction.” December marked the fourth straight month of decline in the jobless rate.
