The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its jobs report last Friday for the month of October, which stated unemployment had risen from 7.8 percent in September to 7.9 percent.
To put things in perspective, when President Barack Obama entered office in January 2009, unemployment was at 7.8 percent, and during his term, it peaked at 10.2 percent in October 2009.
It is easy to defend Obama’s situation. You can say he inherited an awful situation from former President George W. Bush and that he has done the best he can.
I can say, however, as somebody who will be entering the workforce in the next few years, Obama trying his hardest is not good enough.
“He said he was going to lower the unemployment rate down to 5.2 percent right now, today we learned that it is actually 7.9 percent and that’s nine million jobs short of what he promised,” Gov. Mitt Romney said in a speech in West Allis, Wis. last Friday.
The promise of this 5.2 percent Romney referred to comes from the Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, released by some of the Obama Administration’s top economic advisers on Jan. 9, 2009.
This report projected that by this point, unemployment would be at or below six percent whether or not the economic stimulus was passed.
Their projections were just a bit off, and by a bit off I mean by a factor of nine million Americans out of work.
This does not even take into account those who have given up hope and stopped looking for work.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not so sure of Romney’s economic policies. He makes a lot of bold claims about fixing the economy, but offers little explanation as to
how he’ll do it.
What I am sure of, however, is that four years of Obama’s policies have proven to be ineffective.
Unemployment is higher now than when he took office, and most other economic indicators remain stagnant.
While I’m not so sure Romney is the right answer for our economy, I am 100 percent sure Obama is the wrong one.
Scott, a sophomore computer science major from Huntersville, is an opinion writer.