New York Times
Chris Cillizza noted this morning that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was poised to release its state-by-state jobs report, showing unemployment changes over the last year, which he argued is "absolutely important as a broad indicator of economic optimism or pessimism."
It's a reasonable point. After all, the vast majority of Americans are only exposed to the job market in their immediate area -- they either see "help wanted" signs or they don't; their friends and neighbors are either working or they're not; etc.
So, how does the new report look? In the key 2012 battleground states, quite good, actually.
Several battlegrounds states, including Florida, Nevada and Ohio, saw large drops in unemployment over the last 12 months, the government reported Wednesday.
The latest state-by-state numbers, the last batch before the election, show that Nevada actually saw the largest drop of any state. The unemployment rate declined by 1.8 percentage points between September 2011 and September 2012, although the state still has the nation's highest unemployment rate, 11.8 percent.
Florida and Ohio also ranked among the 10 states with the largest drops in unemployment, down 1.7 percentage points and 1.6 points respectively.
Of the nine swing states, only New Hampshire saw the jobless rate inch higher, but even a slight increase pushed the state's rate to 5.7 percent, which is extremely low by national standards.
Looking ahead, keep a few angles in mind.
First, as President Obama travels to these battlegrounds, he'll no doubt want to take advantage of these numbers to make the case that the economy is obviously improving, and it'd be tragic to go back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
Second, because several of these states have Republican governors, watch to see if Mitt Romney pressures them to downplay the good news. It has happened before.
And third, will the right's conspiracy theorists again accuse the BLS of manipulating the data?
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I am amazed at these narrow-minded religious men, when you know they are going again Oh these uppity women what are we to do with them. These narrow-minded religious men cannot call women witches this time where it was how many women were burned at the stake because of being called a witch. There was one town in the European area where every single woman was murdered though. These narrow-minded religious men are hiding behind closed doors though scheming to prepare their latest lies, but really are afraid of the boogey man under the bed. You see they do not want the real truth coming out about Jesus and what he stood for and they are so determined to keep those lies up. But Jesus was never about lies, but for the truth.
The republicans desperately need to make it look like the country is never going to get any better at least until after the election. If they lose they will continue the chicken little refrain that the sky is falling and the sun will never rise again. If they win watch and see that as if by magic and divine intervention things will be suddenly getting better and its all thanks to them.
They are only lies if Mitt can not get you to believe him.
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Are there any figures handy on how many jobs were created by the intense political campaigning in those states?
Actually I think the right will accuse Obama of only wanting to aid the battleground states, purely for re-election purposes, and as soon as the election is over, if he wins, expect a surge in the employment rates as Obama invests all his time and energy into his eeeeeeevil seeeeecret ageeeeeeenda...complete with taking yer guns and making you gay marry and making it illegal to even call a bundle of twigs a faggot. Oh, and assassinate Rush & Glenn, natch.
In the states with Repugnant Governors - you know they'll claim that it was the actions of their governor - rather than giving any credit to Mr. Obama. They like the argument that all improvements are due to GOP policies and any failures are Obama. Just like the argument that Government can't create jobs - but Romney is going to create 12 million of them.
I live in Ohio.
I see help wanted signs for CNC Machinists,
I've done machine work.
I've built the machines to do machine work.
I have hundreds of hours of University semester hours and two Tech Degrees.
I have played with microprocessors and programmed PLCs.
They say I don't qualify for the position.
And I DON'T qualify for the position.
And that is why Barry is so Spot On with his asserting we need education of all types.
.
According to the Department of Labor in July 2012 there were 3 million jobs that were available, but the people applying were not qualified. Perhaps if the American Jobs Act had been passed in addition to providing jobs it also had training program to help people update their experience and adapt to having to have to change fields.
I'm a little foggy on this, (old age I guess), but back when Clinton was in office, wasn't it the teapubs screaming about the jobs created under his administration were low paying jobs? And now these same teapubs want to remove minimum wage with a likely result of creating low paying jobs? And Congress does play with the unemployment numbers when Congress decides whether or not to extend benefits.
Then with Willard and the teapubs wanting to dump everything on the states, someone needs to tell their ignorant Faux supporters that the result of the states taking over will mean more state taxes and if the states are broke now, where is all this money going to come from? And if they go with the program and eliminate welfare and social programs to help people, what do they think all these people are going to do when they can't find work or get money to feed themselves and/or their families? The 47% of these "moochers" aren't going to take this lying down.
Maybe they called it Soylent "Green" because it was made from people with money?
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How many more times do we have to continue to get better jobs numbers before people realize Pres. Obama's policies and plans create jobs and the only reason they're not creating them faster is because more of these plans are in Congress's lockbox of obstruction. Because if there aren’t enough of us realizing this now, Republican failed economic policies will be put back in place by Mitt and all of us will realize it when the job numbers start coming back down. Some more numbers to remind us who the real job creators are, over the last 50 years the Democrat’s economic model has a proven history of creating 42 million jobs, while the Republican model has only created 24 million jobs.
NH going the wrong way on unemployment has nothing to do with the national economy and everything to do with our crazed Teabaglican Free Stater legislature, which has done everything it can get away with to put this state, which does not have an income or sales tax, into a death spiral economically. I am running for the NH House and trying to make sure my voters understand that the sudden calls for jobs, jobs, jobs from the NH GOP is just a repeat of what they promised in 2010 and did not deliver. Interestingly enough, there were over 200 bills filed by this legislature for the new session that starts in January, and if one of our newspapers hadn't got curious, we would never have seen them before the election, because Speaker Bully O'Brien was having them hid. Same old social agenda and some weird libertarian faux-constitutional fixes...what a mess they made in two years.