Unemployment Complicates Obama’s Reelection

Barack Obama’s potential reelection could become more complicated because of negative numbers surrounding the job market, which apparently weren’t anticipated by any expert close to the head of the White House.

The official unemployment rate in the United States has reached 8.2 percent, although real figures place the statistic at 14.8 percent because the government figures do not include citizens who are not actively searching for work.

At the end of the week the U.S. Department of Labor published May’s figures, a time in which 69,000 new jobs were created — a number that fell short of the forecast of 158,000 positions that were going to be created in order to balance the equilibrium.

The North American economy is not just moving slowly; it seems as if it’s trying to grow with the emergency brake on. The unemployment situation is critical, and the relationship between revenue and salary is also problematic, according to Travis Fryman, an analyst for BlackBay Wealth Management.

If unemployment in the U.S. was calculated with all workers, including those who stopped searching for work, the real numbers would be 14.5 percent in April and 14.8 percent in May.

Unemployment continuously reaches high numbers. The complete count of unemployed individuals for a period of 27 weeks has grown from 5.1 million to 5.4 million, with the average time out of work rising from 39.1 weeks to 39.7 weeks.

Political analysts believe this surprising report could be detrimental to Obama’s election campaign as the incumbent president, given that the economy continues to be a main concern for voters.

Last week, the president urged Congress to ratify a group of amendments to mitigate unemployment that, according to him, would help the national industry recover from the economic slowdown.

In his weekly address by radio and Internet on June 2, the head of state affirmed that his message to the legislators in the Capitol is simply that they get to work so that their fellow citizens can do the same.

The urging of the leader, who will be seeking reelection for another four years in November, followed government reports from the Department of Commerce that spelled bad news for his administration and the job market.

The Republican candidate Mitt Romney and other members of the opposing party confirm that the U.S. economy is slow because of too many fiscal burdens, excessive state spending and Washington’s restrictive economic policies.

Obama and his opponent Romney continued into June nearly tied in the number of voters that would be supporting them in the general elections in November.

Gathered from a survey by CNN and ORC International, 49 percent of citizens said that they would support the leader come November, while 46 percent said they would vote for Romney. The same poll found that 45 percent of those interviewed believe that Obama better understands the economic situation, the same percentage that supports the former Republican governor concerning this issue.

Likewise, the CNN/ORC poll showed that 31 percent of those surveyed believe that Romney will improve the domestic industry, while 28 percent think that unemployment rates will fall if Obama remains as president.

The U.S. economy began to slow down in the first trimester, growing just 1.9 percent annually. It was the sixth-consecutive trimester in which government spending fell, due primarily to budget constrictions. Experts have said that the slow growth is due to a drop in public spending combined with modest consumer expenditures, in contrast with the growth of the domestic commercial deficit.

The primary world economy lost 4.3 million jobs during the first 13 months that Obama was in the Oval Office. Experts hoped that in May there would be at least 150,000 new jobs and that the unemployment rate would go down to 8.1 percent.

New revisions of old calculations show evidence that the U.S. economy gained 49,000 new jobs, excluding those expected to be created in March and April. Normally, acceptable unemployment rates hover around 4 percent.

Many private companies cut so many jobs that they were adding only 82,000 staff positions. Furthermore, unemployment is highest in the healthcare, transportation, commercial and manufacturing sectors, according to a study from BlackBay Management.

The sources also showed that the construction sector suffered the greatest decline in the past two years, with the public system continuing to cut jobs, having already lost 13,000 jobs in the past month.

The numbers have surprised the majority of analysts. There are indicators of a domino effect from Europe to America, with both small- and middle-sized companies most at risk in North America, said Tim Drew from the independent bureau of the National Federation of Independent Business.

At the same time, the still unstoppable underemployment rate rose in the United States to 14.8 percent, after having been stable or having fallen around the end of 2011.

Many scholars assure that analyzing more data offers a better insight into the labor market in the northern country because it includes people with part-time work and also people who actively looked for work at some point within the last year.

An initial conclusion is that the U.S. remains unable to solve the problems stemming from the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the loss of 8.8 million jobs, of which only 3.8 million have been revived since. Still, 12.7 million U.S. citizens don’t have jobs, and 42.8 percent of them have been unemployed for six months or more.

The question is: For whom will these citizens vote in the upcoming election that will take place in less than six months? With a labor force made up of almost 154 million people, job creation is the indirect engine for industry in the U.S.

Families with money mean more consumer activity, and this personal spending represents 70 percent of the heart of the domestic economy.

The next presidential election will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012. Citizens will be voting for the next president and vice president of the United States. Obama has the right to run one more time. On the same day, 33 senators and all their representatives will be elected, as well as 11 governors and various state legislator positions.