According to priority polling, via Polling Report.com, those that include unemployment and jobs in their survey question, the majority of Americans list economy and jobs as their number one priority, which is indicative of unemployment numbers and/or the economy playing a very large part of the decision making process in 2012 when voters will decide whether to reelect Barack Obama or replace him with another president.The United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics has a page which lists the local area unemployment statistics and the areas still at or above 8 percent as of November, are listed below.
Alabama- 8.7%
Arizona- 8.7%
Arkansas- 8.0%
California- 11.3%
Colorado- 8.0%
Connecticut- 8.4%
D.C.- 10.6%
Florida- 10.0%
Georgia- 9.9%
Idaho- 8.5%
Illinois- 10.0%
Indiana- 9.0%
Kentucky- 9.4%
Michigan- 9.8%
Mississippi- 10.5%
Missouri- 8.2%
Nevada- 13.0%
New Jersey- 9.1%
New York- 8.0%
North Carolina- 10.0%
Ohio- 8.5%
Oregon- 9.1%
Rhode Island- 10.5%
South Carolina- 9.9%
Tennessee- 9.1%
Texas- 8.1%
Washington- 8.7%
Excluding DC, that is over half the states in America who are still at or above 8% unemployment.
Early December it was reported the national "official" unemployment dropped to 8.6%, which did not include the 2.6 million persons marginally attached to the work force, ready, able, needing and willing to work but had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Including those people, the U6 Unemployment according to the Department of Labor is 15.6%.
The reasoning behind the drop in the official unemployment numbers was cause for concern by many experts and was explained by Bloomberg at the time:
The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, was forecast to hold at 9 percent. The decrease in the jobless rate reflected a 278,000 gain in employment at the same time 315,000 Americans left the labor force.
“You’d like to see the unemployment rate coming down when people are coming into the job market, not disappearing,” James Glassman, senior economist at JP Morgan Chase & Co. in New York, said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene.
Using December 2011 polling numbers from Reuters/Ipsos, Associated Press/GfK, Rasmussen Reports and CBS News, the national average shows that 69.8% of the public believes the country in heading in the wrong direction with only 25% thinking the U.S. is heading in the right direction.
Other polling numbers show that 60% of voters disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy and 54% of voters do not believe he has performed his job as president well enough to be reelected. (Source- CBS News)
In November 2012, jobs, the economy and Obama jobs performance in specific areas, will be uppermost in the minds of voters when they cast their vote on whether to reelect Barack Obama or change the direction this country is heading and replace him.
Barack Obama recently said "We’re Better Off Today Than When I Took Over."
Are we?
Are you?
.