Unemployment in the United States of America

 

My motivation for choosing this topic comes from my firsthand knowledge of what unemployment can do to a house hold and the economy, it is interesting to see how a president can determine the state of it as well. Also, that it will interesting to see what happens to the unemployment rate with a change in the presidency. Unemployment is the term used when an individual is currently searching for work but cannot find some. It is also used to measure the condition of the nation’s economy, which is also very interesting due to the fact that the last time there was this many republicans in the white house unemployment was on a steady increase well into President Obama’s first term. Unemployment in the U.S. reached its in peak in October 2009 when it was at 10%, (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Not to mention entering a complete recession, which means that output declined for over two quarters. The question I am trying to answer is how the economy improved so much in 2009 to 2016 and why did the unemployment rate decrease so much.

While some may argue that the economy the Barack Obama is “flawed” and “ugly” they cannot argue with the numbers. At the beginning of this year the unemployment rate was at 4.8%. For the first time since 2007, under Obama’s presidency got the unemployment down to under 5% since last year. In Nelson D. Schwartz article “Wages Rise as U.S. Unemployment Rate Falls Below 5%” he analyzes the state of the U.S. economy during Obama’s second term. He details how the rapid boom of 2015 had momentum rolling into January 2016 with an a half percentage increase of hourly wages. Schwartz goes on to discuss the job growth in December 2015 where employers added 262,000 jobs. He ends his piece with a quote from Michael Gapen, who is the chief U.S. economist at Barclays. Gapen does not think we are heading into a recession. After reading this it seems the future of the economy is a bright with the unemployment rate staying under 5%, where it goes from there will either be great or a disaster.

As for the opposition, those who feel the economy did not improve between 2009 and 2016, I will reference Deroy Murdock’s article “Obama’s Pretty Words Cannot Beautify His Ugly Economy.” Written three months after the previous article, this one focuses on a wider spectrum of a healthy economy. He states that the Labor Force Participation Rate went from 65.7 percent to 62.8 percent, which means that 4% of Americans stopped looking for work in eight years and that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) did not increase under his presidency. He goes on to mention that more Americans are on food stamps, own less homes, and Obama increased national debt by 9 trillion dollars. Although there are some shocking statistics in this article, there has still been an incredible improvement in the economy since 2009. If there are more citizens on food stamps than that means more people are getting to eat which isn’t necessarily negative. Also with home ownership being down 5%, an argument can be made that this stems from the Bush Administration’s mortgage incident.

The economy was in shambles in 2009 and Obama inherited it that way, so any kind of improvement is great. Anything is better than a recession. After reading both articles and seeing both views. No matter your opinion of Obama he did improve the economy. With unemployment at its lowest rate since 2007, job creation, and wages on the rise hopefully this trend will continue during Trump’s term. However long that lasts.

 

References

Murdock, D. (2016, May 06). Obama’s Pretty Words Cannot Beautify His Ugly Economy . Retrieved February 15, 2017, from

Schwartz, N. (2016, Feb 05). Wages Rise as U.S. Unemployment Rate Falls Below 5%. Retrieved February 15, 2017, from