| Presidential Candidates Use Jobs Data To Fan Flames |
| Aug-03-2012 |
| Keywords: obama, romney, jobs report, unemployment rate, campaigns, attack, economy |
Today's jobs report was greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm on Wall Street, while the presidential campaigns used the data to further their war of words.
The Labor Department reporting the economy grew a significantly better than expected 163,000 jobs in July. Meanwhile the unemployment rate ticked higher, reaching 8.3%.
"Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a hammer blow to struggling middle-class families," Mitt Romney said in a statement.
Speaking from North Las Vegas, he later called the sustained high unemployment an "extraordinary record of failure."
"That's the longest period of time, 42 months ... we've had unemployment above 8 percent in American history," Romney said.
Obama, speaking just minutes after Romney, said that raising taxes on the middle class is "the last thing that we should be doing."
He highlighted that the jobs report means the economy has created 4.5 million new jobs in the last 29 months, and 1.1 million this year.
"But let's acknowledge we've still got too many folks out there who are looking for work," Obama said.
While Wall Street celebrated the government's jobs report with a more than 200-point rally on the Dow, the economy needs to a pick up if we're going to do more than simply tread water.
The economy added an average of 151,000 jobs a month this year, roughly the same as last year's pace. That's not enough to satisfy the 12.8 million Americans who are unemployed. It would take 250,000 new jobs a month to rapidly bring the unemployment rate down. |
|
|
Posted by Lou Dobbs Staff at 5:00 PM Email to a friend |
| < Back to Today's Issues |
|
 |
|
|
|
