Unemployment: Obama’s Re-elect Targets

The Friday monthly unemployment report top-line number was 244,000 jobs created, a solid figure that suggests economic recovery is underway. The 244,000 number, however, wasn’t the whole story. Other results were weaker, with the household survey, a separate poll that is an actual head count, indicating job creation barely kept pace with labor force expansion.

I believe two numbers are going to measure Obama’s job creation success when the November 2012 election arrives. One is the unemployment rate, which Obama must bring down to 7.8%, the percentage during his first month in office. Here, the president faces a challenge, because as the job creation picture improves, more people enter the workforce, making it harder to lower the unemployment rate. It rose from 8.8% to 9.0% this month.

Another number voters should watch is total jobs created. In the separate establishment survey, the Labor Department tells us Bush left office with 133,563,000 people working. Will Obama get America back to that number? It’s a fixed target. To date, he has presided over a net job loss of 2,535,000.

The chart below summarizes Obama’s employment-related targets for November 2012.