President Barack Obama has been touting the recovering economy as part of his bid for reelection this November, but the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), have released a new report that reveals a very poor outlook on the future of America’s economy.

The Department of Labor claims that the unemployment rate dropped from 8.5% in December 2011 to 8.3% in January 2012, but the CBO report states that, “The official unemployment rate excludes those individuals who would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks as well as those who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work; if those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent.”

These numbers reflect the actual status of labor in the country that many outside of the mainstream media have been pointing to as indicators of the overall health of the economy.

The rate of unemployment, according to the White House, has been above 8% since February 2009, making the past three years under President Obama the longest stretch of high unemployment in the United States since the Great Depression.

Additionally, the CBO reports that the unemployment rate in America will stay above 8% through the election of 2012 and even until 2014.

“…the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The share of unemployed people who have been looking for work for more than six months — referred to as the long-term unemployed — topped 40 percent in December 2009 and has remained above that level ever since.”

When Obama took office in 2009, the official rate was 7.8%. He promised to keep unemployment under 8%, but only three years into his administration has it finally dropped below 9%.

Historically, presidents do not get re-elected with unemployment over 7.2%.

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02/16/2012

Categories: economics, politics . Tags:Congressional Budget Office, Department of Labor, economy, President Barack Obama, unemployment rate . Author: veks_ink

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