Grim predictions in the business community over unemployment and growth are turning President Obama’s positive spin that the economy is improving into wishful thinking.
John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, is warning that economic growth this year is likely to be closer to 2 percent, not the 3 percent the administration is hoping for, and that unemployment will not dip below 8 percent.
Asked what he sees the unemployment rate at on the October weekend before Election Day, Engler says that he has a “hard time thinking it will be below 8 percent.”
Engler says that to create enough jobs to turn around the economy, growth has to be closer to 3.5 percent, but his members just aren’t seeing it.
As a result, he says, “We’re kind of limping along where we are.” He has not been an outspoken critic of the president, like other business leaders, though his group is championing a corporate tax rate cut deeper than President Obama’s, a point made during a recent cordial 90-minute meeting in the White House between the president and Roundtable CEOs.
