Obama Breathes: Unemployment Rate Drops, but Romney Questions Data

A month before the presidential election, President Barack Obama received the news that the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent. But his Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, spoke his mind yesterday, assuring that it is a false number and that the real number is 11 percent.

According to the government’s report, for the first time in 44 months the unemployment rate in the U.S. is below 8 percent. These are the lowest numbers since Obama took office in the White House in January 2009.

This information paves Obama’s electoral way after having lost the first of three debates against his Republican rival.

The Labor Department announced yesterday that unemployment fell to 7.8 percent after the economy incorporated 142,000 jobs in September. The private sector created 104,000 jobs last month, while the public sector added 10,000. The same statistics showed that the manufacturing sector lost 16,000 jobs, whereas the construction sector incorporated 5,000 more.

The data would confirm that the economic stimulus policy, while it has large issues, is producing results unlike the stagnation and recession experienced by the European Union.

The chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, held yesterday that the U.S. economy “continues to move in the right direction.”

“There is more work that remains to be done,” but this report “provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” added Krueger.

This official stressed that it is critical to “continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007.”

Local analysts indicate that the rate dropped because more people found jobs, a tendency that could have an impact on the undecided voters a month before the November 6 election.

“For President Obama, the first national unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent during his presidency couldn’t come at a better time,” wrote Richard Wolf, columnist for USA Today.

According to Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, “this month’s jobs report shows the economy is finally beginning to build some momentum.”

The Republicans tried not to lose the initiative and questioned the certainty of the official report.

“This is not what a real recovery looks like,” Romney said.

“The real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent,” said the former governor of Massachusetts, without explaining how he arrived at this statistic. He did clarify that there are millions of Americans still struggling for work, living in poverty and using food stamps to feed their families.

Romney is not alone in his accusation. The retired former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, said that the unemployment rate numbers were manipulated. “Those numbers were cooked up and distorted by the Obama administration,” he denounced. According to the specialists, it is very difficult to falsify this kind of data so crucial to the economy.

The information provided yesterday by the Labor Department reveals that salaries increased in September and more people started looking for a job. Another encouraging piece of data for economy is that after the report was released, future stocks rose slightly.