That's after 6 years and 4 months for those of you in Rio Linda.
From Calculated Risk here:
This [graph] shows the depth of the recent employment recession - worse than any other post-war recession - and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis. Total employment is now 98 thousand above the pre-recession peak and at an all time high. It is probably time to retire this graph - until the next recession.
Obama was first elected in month 12 of the jobs recession when its severity was still at -3.0% on this chart. Americans had no idea what was coming. Nearly 30 million Americans would go on in 2009 alone to file first time claims for unemployment compensation.
If Obama's election meant salvation from a looming crisis, businesses didn't think so. They proceeded out of fear of the most anti-capitalist president to be elected in the history of the country to cut their number one cost in order to survive what was coming. Arguably Obama's election made a severe downturn into the employment crisis that it became.
The longest and deepest jobs recession in the post-war is now over according to the seasonally adjusted figures published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the very least the Columbia and Harvard educated Obama did nothing effectual to end it in a timely manner as all his predecessors had done, even George W. Bush by comparison. The reason? Your choices are a) incompetence and b) malice aforethought.
Bringing America down a notch or two seems to have been the guiding principle for every problem Obama has had to confront during his presidency, whether in domestic or foreign policy. When it comes to jobs, the average middle class family which lost a good $50,000 income to long term unemployment is now in the 6th year of reduced circumstances. Such a family is easily $250,000 behind when you combine the effects of reduced wages and retirement funding. Such equality with the poor isn't what the middle class had in mind, but it sure looks like what Obama did.
