Jobs Report Makes it a “Super Friday” for Obama

[babylonsister]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/02/january-jobs-report-obama.html

Jobs Report Makes it a “Super Friday” for Obama
Posted by John Cassidy




If you think you heard a loud cheer around 8:30 E.T. this morning, you were right. It came from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Super Bowl weekend started early—at just about the moment when the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 per cent in January.

snip//


At that point, it will be tough for Mitt Romney to stand up and say the President’s policies have made the recession worse. And it will be impossible for Republicans to deny that things are getting better. Actually, some of them have already dropped that pretense. In a statement this morning, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, said the jobs report was “welcome news” before adding, “We need to do better.”

That is certainly true, but is it a big enough indictment to turf out a first-term President, something Americans have historically been very reluctant to do? I doubt it, and so do many other people. On Intrade, the political betting market, the implied probability of Obama winning in November jumped by more than two per cent this morning. It now stands at about fifty-seven per cent.

snip//



You don’t have to know much about economics or statistics to see things are picking up: a hundred and fifty-seven thousand, two hundred and three thousand, two hundred and forty-three thousand—that series of figures is increasing. And other statistics confirm the positive picture. The Commerce Department reported today that factory orders rose again in December. For 2011 as a whole, they jumped by more than twelve per cent as automakers and other manufacturers had a banner year. Outside of finance and residential real estate, most sectors of the economy have seen a meaningful rebound in business since the recession officially ended, in June, 2009.

Is everything hunky dory? Of course it isn’t. About 12.7 million Americans are still out of work, and 5.5 million of them have been jobless for more than six months. Some groups still have very high unemployment rates: teen-agers—23.2 per cent; blacks—13.6 per cent; Hispanics—10.5 per cent. And if you add in people who say they want a job but have stopped looking and those working part time for economic reasons, the overall rate of “under-employment” is still 15.1 percent.

But that figure is ticking down, too.

On Wall Street, the traders have a saying: the trend is your friend. The same thing applies to politics. As I noted in December, “The U.S. economy appears to be heading in the right direction. Which for President Obama and his Republican rivals is potentially very big news.” Two months on, the only change I would make to that statement is to take out “potentially.”

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

[gopiscrap]

1. Hell ya!!!!!

[morningglory]

2. Contractor's wife called to chat. She said they never get contracts signed in January

around here. Jan-Mar is always very scarey, and they have never had a contract signed in January. This January they had 5 contracts signed. I had to go out on an errand yesterday after lunch and it was like Christmas shopping traffic. Don't muck it up!

[MjolnirTime]

3. I love that photo. Obama gets to be all-time QB on my team.

[jenmito]

4. K&R. I love how the Repubs. are scrambling to try to turn this into a negative...

but I love that pic more!

[Grateful for Hope]

5. Excellent news!

[madrchsod]

6. even more important---veterans numbers came down over 2%

that is really good news for the veterans and obama.