Obama's Economic Record Is Strong, Even Though Wages Are Stagnant | New Republic
The economy is still certainly improved since 2009. After all, when Obama took office, the economy was in the midst of the worst recession in 80 years ... The unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent and real wages have been stagnant even as unemployment came back down. When Obama touts the
current 5.9 percent jobless rate, many financial analysts roll their eyes. Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen, they note, but labor force participation is also at its lowest point since the late 1970s. A falling unemployment rate is not good if it’s the result of workers dropping out of the labor market. But not everybody who’s decied to stop looking for work has done so for the same reason. Some of them are baby boomers who are retiring, some are millennials who have gone back to school, while others really are prime-aged workers too discouraged to search for work. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have found work. When Obama says “our businesses have created 10 million new jobs,” it’s a legitimate testament to how far we’ve come ... Obama never wanted the sequester and consistently sought a deal to eliminate it. He predicted that the sequester would damage the economy—and he was right. By
one estimate, the sequester cost Americans 1.2 million jobs in 2013 alone. The Murray-Ryan budget relaxed some of those spending cuts, but the majority are still intact and will continue to hurt economic growth. Is it fair to blame Obama for the economic damage of the sequester? Maybe a little bit, but most of the fault lies with the GOP ... Just as Obama’s economic agenda is underappreciated because of Republican obstruction, it has also benefited from support from the Federal Reserve ... the U.S. economy is in far better shape than the rest of the developed world. Growth is stronger and unemployment is lower. As Krugman
explains in the current issue of
Rolling Stone, the U.S. recovery has even slightly outpaced the historical average for a recovery after a severe financial crisis. And this is despite the reckless, destructive behavior of the Republicans.