With elections just a year away, many people have been questioning if President Obama has a viable chance to win reelection. With his approval rating plummeting since taking office and support with his key groups at a new low many people are wondering if he can win or not. President Obama’s most difficult task since taking office has been tackling the high unemployment rates. Majority of the people are not happy with how is handling the unemployment situation. However, this past week President Obama received some good news in term of people unemployed in the United States.
As reported in my earlier blog, President Obama faces a scary statistic. No incumbent president has ever won reelection with an unemployment rate above 7.2 percent (Soltis). President Obama has been trying to battle that high unemployment with his American Jobs Act, but it did not get enough cloture votes. However, President Obama did receive good news last week. The November unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in October (Lee and Parsons). In November the economy gained 140,000 private jobs while losing 20,000 public jobs (Lee and Parsons). Many of those jobs were in retail. “Retailers last month boosted their head counts by 50,000, the second-largest holiday hiring in November in a decade” (Lee and Parsons). The average monthly rate of creation of new jobs over the past three months has been 143,000 jobs which is almost twice the number of news jobs that were created a month over the summer (Lee and Parsons). Also, November is the 21st consecutive month to show job growth in the private market (Lee and Parsons). Another positive note for President Obama is the fact that unemployment rate has not been this low since March of 2009 (Lee and Parsons). However, as positive as this new number is there are still millions of people out there who are unemployed. Speaker John Boehner echoed this sentiment by saying that “the jobless rate in this country is still unacceptable” (Lee and Parsons). I have to agree with Boehner on this one. Although, this is a positive sign, we need to be posting these kind of unemployment rate decreases every month. Since November was a holiday month, it would be interesting to see how many of those jobs were temporary in preparation for the holiday.
Another scary statistic facing President Obama is his approval rating. No incumbent president has won reelection with an approval rating of less than 48 percent (Soltis). Compared to that his November approval rating of 43 percent is not looking very promising (Jones). Although, it is an improvement from the 41 percent it was back in August it is still very low (Jones). Only President Carters who had 40 percent approval rating November of his third term, had a third year November job approval rate below President Obamas (Jones). According to Jones, “All recently elected presidents were at or above 50% in December of their third year in office.” The most recent three presidents had approval ratings from the low to mid fifties (Jones). George H. W Bush had November approval rate of 56 percent, Bill Clinton 53 percent, and George W. Bush had 52 percent (Jones). If President Obama wins reelection, his November numbers would be a stark contrast to theirs.
The 2012 elections will be very interesting to watch. Congress’s approval rating is even less than President Obama’s. With the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and more people calling for higher taxes on the rich, I wonder if a Republican can really win no matter how unpopular President Obama is right now. It will be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming year.
Works Cited
Jones, Jeffrey. "Obama's November Approval Weak From Historical Perspective." Gallup.Com - Daily News, Polls, Public Opinion on Government, Politics, Economics, Management. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. http://www.gallup.com/poll/151106/Obama-November-Approval-Weak-Historical-Perspective.aspx.
Lee, Don, and Christi Parsons. "U.S. Unemployment Rate Falls to 8.6% - Los Angeles Times." Featured Articles From The Los Angeles Times. 02 Dec. 2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/02/business/la-fi-jobs-20111203.
Soltis, Kristen. "Kristen Soltis: Is Obama Destined to Win or Doomed to Fail?" Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Web. 04 Dec. 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-soltis/is-obama-destined-to-win_b_1124431.html>.
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