Today’s jobs report shows that unemployment is up over last month, with the economy shedding 85,000 jobs. This was worse than expected, and will likely not play well in the media. This is bad news for Democrats, says Reuters econ blogger James Pethokoukis. Pethokoukis has compiled “Nine reasons why the Dec. jobs report is bad news for Dems” — some key points from the list:
2. President Barack Obama’s approval numbers are hovering just a tick below 50 percent. Since 1962, the average House midterm loss for the president’s party when his approval is sub-50 percent is 41 seats. The GOP needs 40 to take the House.
And:
4. Then will come the second-take stories that will notice the shrinking labor force, which dropped by nearly 700,000 from November. Had it stayed stable for last month, the jobless rate would have been 10.4 percent. Had it stayed stable since August, the jobless rate would be 11 percent!
5. But wait, there’s more! The U-6 rate rate which combines the basic jobless rate, discouraged workers, part-timers-who-would-rather-be-full-tim ers climbed to 17.3 percent. And the average duration of unemployment rose to a record high 29.1 weeks.
So to sum up, in economic terms the jobs figures are even worse than they appear, and they already look pretty bad. Politically, obviously this is very bad news for Democrats. And as my colleague notes, the White House is already trying to hide the decline.
