This was the month by month unemployment rate from nov 83 to nov 84
1983-11-01 8.5
1983-12-01 8.3
1984-01-01 8.0
1984-02-01 7.8
1984-03-01 7.8
1984-04-01 7.7
1984-05-01 7.4
1984-06-01 7.2
1984-07-01 7.5
1984-08-01 7.5
1984-09-01 7.3
1984-10-01 7.4
1984-11-01 7.2
At the height of the Reagan recession unemployment reached 10.8. By June of 84 it was 7.2 and lower than Jan 81. Reagan went on to win in a landslide.
There is no evidence that the economy is going to see the drops in unemployment to match the 84 drops. My guess is that the rate in June of 12 will be, at the very best, 8 and more probably around the 8.5 it is now.
This will be a very tough race. Honestly the main reason he has a shot at this, at all, is the incredible weakness of the GOP field combined with his success in foreign policy and non economic domestic policy. Those who think that this race will be a cakewalk are just plain engaging in wishful thinking. Obama has been very lucky in his choice of enemies but unless his economic luck changes for the better, this race will be a nail biter. This will be a Truman-Dewey, not a Reagan Mondale.
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Employment population ratio, no disability, entire population:
Employment population ratio, no disability, 65 & over:
Long time series, employment population ratio:
has been moving sideways of late, but you can see the drop associated with the stimulus. It went from a high of near 7 to 1 down to 4 to 1
http://www.epi.org/publication/job-seekers-ratio-remains-4-1-34th-straight/
Generally, that ratio even close to 3 means that jobs are hard to get and any significant cyclical effects in any significant industry will produce rapidly rising unemployment rates.
Regarding actual jobs, I posted two graphs in this thread that are very strong measures. Covered employment changes (a count of all workers contributing to unemployment insurance) is a very strong measure of absolute measures of employment. That shows the movement of total jobs in the economy over time.
The employment/population ratio is compiled from a survey, but is pretty strong. It incorporates the other side of the equation - growth in population.
You can't substitute a graph like this, which only tangentially suggests employment/unemployment rates for strong measures to argue that the trend is up. Not only is that data weak, it includes a significant number of job postings that are actually not available to US citizens - the H1-B postings. I sampled industrials (utilities, electronics, etc) and I came up with over 52% H1-B postings.
We can make the argument from the covered jobs graph that things improved this year - that we finally got back to the position where the economy is finally adding net jobs. But we cannot claim that the overall picture for the worker out there is improving - the employment/population ratio would have to improve for that to happen.
In a lot of ways we are losing ground still!
Real average hourly earnings for non-supervisory workers have dropped 2.1% over the year:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t02.htm
Youth unemployment levels just don't drop. This is the 16-19 employment/population ratio long time series. Given the small sample, there has been no statistically significant improvement since 2009. The hard NSA numbers for November:
2009: 24.9
2010: 24.8
2011: 25.0
The one trap the Democratic party should not fall into is to attempt to portray the economy as better than it is. This just frightens people - failure of government officials to even acknowledge problems is the surest way to get your butts thrown out of office:
The average voter doesn't blame the current administration for this downturn - they know full well that it began long before this administration arrived. But the average voter WILL blame the administration for a bunch of happy talk that conflicts with what the average voter is experiencing.
Real personal incomes in the US are falling. As of Q3 real personal per capita income (includes social benefits) was 32,335 compared to Q1's 32,670. Most of this is due to inflation, but the reality is that although I think real personal per capita income will rise this quarter, unless inflation falls significantly next year we are extremely likely to subside into another downturn, although hopefully it will be brief. If you look at the employment/population ratio graph, you'll see that it is bottoming each year around February, even seasonally adjusted. First quarter will not be strong.
This is a graph showing the change (%) of covered employment by over 1, 2 & 3 year time sequences. It points out the huge difference between the recovery in the 80s and our current recovery:
To go further, Obama's reelection campaign will be deeply affected by the youth vote. Obama won by a huge margin last election - but among the components of that victory were both a literal landslide among the young voter, and a huge growth in first time voters, who are of course largely young.
With the horrible youth unemployment stats, I think votes for Obama in this population group will be far suppressed in comparison to 2008. This is the time series for 16-19 unemployment rates:
One of the reasons young people are winding up with so much college debt is that they can earn less while going to school and before starting college - higher education is being used as a substitute for a job.
Another problem is that "student" jobs are increasingly becoming "retiree" jobs.
