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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label BLS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BLS. Show all posts
06 September 2025
MOTHER JONES DAILY: RFK Jr. Is Living in a Pretend Anti-Vax World, Beleaguered workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon flock to unionize, How does the Epstein scandal end?, RFK Jr.’s enemies list just got a lot longer, Drinking may have given me cancer. The alcohol industry has worked hard to downplay it., Why evangelicals couldn't care less about Trump's Epstein scandal 5SEP25
05 October 2012
Unemployment Rate Drops To 7.8 Percent; 114,000 Jobs Added To Payrolls & Unemployment rate falls to 7.8% Why the Election Will Turn Less on Wednesday's Presidential Debate Than on Friday's Jobs Report 5OKT&30SEP12
THE numbers are in and they are good, not as good as we need, but that is because the 1% and the bank-financial cabal are still working against President Obama's economic agenda, more interested in increasing their own wealth by outsourcing jobs and hiding their money in offshore tax havens than investing in America and honoring their responsibility to the 99% and the social contract that has built this country. The mitt robme romney / lyin' paul ryan campaign and their rich corporate masters are probably the only ones who are disappointed in the September jobs report and are already spinning new webs of misinformation and propaganda to manipulate their deceived repiglican / tea-bagger supporters. From NPR and the Washington Post.....
The nation's
unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent in
August even though just 114,000 jobs were added to private and public
payrolls, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Those hard-to-reconcile figures — a decline in the jobless rate even though job growth was relatively weak — appear to be at least partly explained by a sharp increase in the number of Americans who found part-time jobs and counted themselves as employed.
The decline in the jobless rate means that for the first time since President Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, unemployment is officially below 8 percent. With jobs and the economy atop the list of issues voters care most about, the report is sure to be a hot topic on the campaign trail.
We'll have more from the report, as well as reactions to it, shortly. As we said Thursday, this news is sure to be a hot topic on the campaign trail.
Update at 11:25 a.m. ET. Obama Hails News:
At a campaign event in Fairfax, Va., President Obama just said that today's report is a "reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now."
Though there are "still too many of our friends and neighbors" looking for work, Obama said, "we are moving forward again." Businesses, he said, "have now added 5.2 million new jobs over the past 2 1/2 years ... [and] the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since I took office."
Update at 10:25 a.m. ET. Labor Secretary Says Talk Of "October Surprise" Is "Ludicrous."
We've added this post: Labor Secretary Says Talk Of Fudged Jobless Numbers Is Insulting.
Update at 9:48 a.m. ET. White House Says News Is "Further Evidence" That Economy Is On The Mend:
"While there is more work that remains to be done, today's employment 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," White House top economic adviser Alan Krueger writes.
Update at 9:45 a.m. ET. Broader Unemployment Rate Stayed At 14.7 Percent:
The Wall Street Journal walks through how the "U-6" unemployment rate remained unchanged last month at 14.7 percent. That rate, as the Journal says:
This statement from Republican presidential nominee was just released by his campaign:
As we just explained, the unemployment rate is based on a "household survey," while the figure on job growth comes from a survey of employers. The Financial Times notes that:
"The sampling error on the business establishment survey is plus or minus 100,000 jobs. The sampling error on the household survey is plus or minus 280,000 jobs."
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Two Surveys, Two Different Indicators:
The unemployment rate reported by BLS is based on surveys it does of households. Basically, researchers ask a series of questions to determine who is and isn't working, what types of jobs they have, whether they're actively looking for work, etc.
That survey produced an eye-popping number: an estimated 873,000 more people reported being "employed" in September than in August. Reuters says that was the biggest one-month jump in that indicator since June 1983.
The figure on payroll employment — in this case, a gain of 114,000 jobs — is based on a survey of public and private employers.
How could 873,000 more people be working if only 114,000 jobs were added to payrolls? One reason: 582,000 more people said they took part-time work "for economic reasons" last month.
Our colleagues at Planet Money have previously reported about how BLS puts its numbers together and the steps it takes to keep them secret. Today, it adds a post on "5 Ways Of Looking At Unemployment."
Update at 8:40 a.m. ET. How Did The Jobless Rate Fall If Job Growth Was Slow?
An increase of 114,000 jobs in an economy with a labor force of more than 155 million people wouldn't alone account for a sharp drop in the jobless rate. So why did the rate decline three tenths of a point?
The Associated Press notes that: "The economy also created 86,000 more jobs in July and August than first estimated. ... The revisions show employers added 146,000 jobs per month from July through September, up from 67,000 in the previous three months."
The BLS report also says there were 456,000 fewer people counted as being among the unemployed last month.
Update at 8:35 a.m. ET. First Time Below 8 Percent Since January 2009:
At 7.8 percent, the jobless rate is back where it was in January 2009 and is below 8 percent for the first time since President Obama was sworn in that month.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/05/162352854/unemployment-rate-drops-to-7-8-percent-114-000-jobs-added-to-payrolls
The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday, from 8.1 percent in July, its lowest since January 2009. It is a surprising show of improvement in a job market that had seemed listless in recent months. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reasons: Not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one.
Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought improvement of that measure of the job market as well.
Add it up, and what had seemed to be a summer lull in employment increasingly appears not to have been much of a lull at all.
While it is that headline number — the drop in the unemployment rate — that will surely capture the most attention in the final weeks of a hard-fought presidential campaign, if anything the inner details of the survey on which it is based reveal an even rosier picture.
The unemployment rate fell despite more people — 418,000 of them — entering the labor force. That brought the ratio of the American population with a job to its highest level since May 2010. Some 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, and 456,000 fewer reported not having a job but wanting one.
The timing was fortunate for President Obama’s reelection campaign, with the most closely followed barometer of economic health, the unemployment rate, falling back to the level it was when he was inaugurated.
Obama appeared buoyant as he touted the report during a late morning campaign event in Northern Virginia. “This morning we found out the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs,” the president said during a rally at George Mason University. “Now, every month reminds us we’ve still got too many of our friends and neighbors looking for work, too many middle-class families struggling to pay the bills.”
Earlier in the day, Republican challenger Mitt Romney focused on the pace of growth, saying in a statement that “this is not what a real recovery looks like.”
“We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office,” the statement said. “If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent.”
The response in the financial markets was positive but relatively muted, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index up 0.46 percent at 11:00 a.m.
It is important not to place too much weight on one report — although with its timing a month before the election, the September numbers tend to receive more attention than most. But altogether, the new numbers point to an economy that is not in as dire straits as it has seemed for much of the summer.
There has been some other evidence that consumers are feeling better about the state of the economy: The Conference Board’s consumer confidence number rose to 70.3 in September from 61.3 in August, and the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey showed a similar rise. Combined with strong gains in the Labor Department’s survey of households, that points to an improvement of conditions that ordinary Americans are seeing that is not visible in slower but more reliable data on production and output.
And indeed, that is reflected in the survey of employers on which the payrolls numbers are based. The 114,000 net new jobs reported by that survey — too few to bring the unemployment rate down over time — was dragged down in part by a 16,000 drop in manufacturing jobs, a sector that has been weak in recent months.
The Labor Department revised its estimates for July and August employment upward buy 86,000, so that in the last three months the nation added an average of 146,000 jobs a month. That is above the level of job creation needed to keep pace with an ever-growing population, about 125,000 a month.
The unemployment rate and the payroll numbers are based on separate surveys, of households and employers respectively, and thus sometimes diverge for brief periods. When American households report stronger gains than employers, as was the case in September, it can be a fluke, but it can also signal that there are gains in self-employment and in business start-ups that are hard to capture in the payroll numbers.
The Obama campaign, trying to recover from a stinging presidential debate performance Wednesday night, credited the dip in the unemployment rate to the president’s stewardship of the economic recovery. “While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment 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,” Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said on the White House’s blog.
Republicans emphasized that 7.8 percent joblessness remains high by any historical standard. Indeed, most economists believe that full employment would be something around 6 percent.
“While today’s unemployment report offered some encouraging news, it simply isn’t good enough,” added Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Majority Leader, in a statement. “7.8% unemployment should not be cause for celebration.”
There will be one more employment report before the election, covering the situation in October, scheduled for release Friday, Nov. 2, in advance of the Nov. 6 race.
Staff writers Nia-Malika Henderson and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-rate-plunges-to-78percent/2012/10/05/bdb6e5bc-0ee7-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_print.html
The biggest election news this week won't be who wins the presidential debate Wednesday night. It will be how many new jobs were created in September, announced Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Rarely in the history has the monthly employment carried so much political significance. If the payroll survey is significantly more than 96,000 -- the number of new jobs created in August -- President Obama can credibly claim the job situation is improving. If significantly fewer than 96,000, Mitt Romney has the more credible claim that the economy isn't improving.
August's household survey showed the overall rate of unemployment to be 8.1 percent in August -- not bad, relative to previous rates -- but that was mainly because so many Americans had stopped looking for work. (You're deemed "unemployed" only if you don't have a full-time job and you're looking for work; if you've given up looking, you're not counted.)
What happened to jobs in August or September -- and what will happen in October (announced November 2, just days before Election Day) -- have very little to do with what Obama did or didn't do. Presidents have little to do with month-to-month changes in employment.
What's more, the rest of the world isn't cooperating: Much of Europe is in recession because it's swallowed the "austerity" cool-aide. Japan is still a basket case. And China is slowing considerably.
In addition, Obama has had to grapple with a recalcitrant Republican congress, whose "number one goal," according to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, hasn't been to create more jobs but to make sure Obama doesn't get a second term.
Still, evidence is accumulating that the U.S. economy is in a stall. According to Commerce Department data released late last week, the economy grew at an annualized rate of only 1.3 percent between April and June. That's down from 2 percent in the first quarter of the year. Consumer spending rose in August just .1 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Orders for durable goods (cars, TVs, other long-lasting manufactured products) dropped 13 percent, the biggest monthly drop in three years. And because incomes grew less than spending, the savings rate dropped to 3.7 percent -- the lowest since April.
Consumers say they're more confident about the future -- and that's a key measure for how they're likely to vote. But the disturbing reality is paychecks continue to shrink. Disposable income (the money left over after taxes) dropped 0.3 percent after adjusting for inflation. That's the weakest reading since November.
America is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. That's mainly because the nation's vast middle class, along with everyone aspiring to join it, doesn't have enough money to get the economy back on track. (The rich spend a much smaller proportion of their incomes, and their savings go around the world to wherever they can summon the highest return.)
Republicans have no answers. To the contrary, Romney's reverse-Robin Hood economics would give more tax cuts to the rich, shrink the middle class even further, and put a huge burden on the poor.
But the economic policies Obama says he'd like to pursue in his second term aren't nearly large or bold enough to do the job.
The median wage has been stuck in neutral for decades. All the gains from economic growth have gone to the top. The stagnation of middle-class wages was at first masked by millions of women moving into paid work, thereby propping up household incomes. Then it was masked by massive household borrowing against rising home values.
But those days are over. The bubble that burst in 2008 has removed both masks. The middle class and the poor who aspire to join it will have enough income to get the economy moving again only if and when they get a larger share of the gains from economic growth.
Perhaps the President will be asked Wednesday night for his plan to accomplish this.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-the-election-will-tur_b_1927805.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
Those hard-to-reconcile figures — a decline in the jobless rate even though job growth was relatively weak — appear to be at least partly explained by a sharp increase in the number of Americans who found part-time jobs and counted themselves as employed.
The decline in the jobless rate means that for the first time since President Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, unemployment is officially below 8 percent. With jobs and the economy atop the list of issues voters care most about, the report is sure to be a hot topic on the campaign trail.
We'll have more from the report, as well as reactions to it, shortly. As we said Thursday, this news is sure to be a hot topic on the campaign trail.
Update at 11:25 a.m. ET. Obama Hails News:
At a campaign event in Fairfax, Va., President Obama just said that today's report is a "reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now."
Though there are "still too many of our friends and neighbors" looking for work, Obama said, "we are moving forward again." Businesses, he said, "have now added 5.2 million new jobs over the past 2 1/2 years ... [and] the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since I took office."
Update at 10:25 a.m. ET. Labor Secretary Says Talk Of "October Surprise" Is "Ludicrous."
We've added this post: Labor Secretary Says Talk Of Fudged Jobless Numbers Is Insulting.
Update at 9:48 a.m. ET. White House Says News Is "Further Evidence" That Economy Is On The Mend:
"While there is more work that remains to be done, today's employment 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," White House top economic adviser Alan Krueger writes.
Update at 9:45 a.m. ET. Broader Unemployment Rate Stayed At 14.7 Percent:
The Wall Street Journal walks through how the "U-6" unemployment rate remained unchanged last month at 14.7 percent. That rate, as the Journal says:
"Includes everyone in the official rate plus 'marginally attached workers' — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that's all they could find."Update at 9:30 a.m. ET. Romney Says This Isn't A "Real Recovery."
This statement from Republican presidential nominee was just released by his campaign:
"This is not what a real recovery looks like. We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we've lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office. If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11%.Update at 9:15 a.m. ET. More On The Two Surveys:
"The results of President Obama's failed policies are staggering — 23 million Americans struggling for work, nearly one in six living in poverty and 47 million people dependent on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. The choice in this election is clear. Under President Obama, we'll get another four years like the last four years. If I'm elected, we will have a real recovery with pro-growth policies that will create 12 million new jobs and rising incomes for everyone."
As we just explained, the unemployment rate is based on a "household survey," while the figure on job growth comes from a survey of employers. The Financial Times notes that:
"The sampling error on the business establishment survey is plus or minus 100,000 jobs. The sampling error on the household survey is plus or minus 280,000 jobs."
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Two Surveys, Two Different Indicators:
The unemployment rate reported by BLS is based on surveys it does of households. Basically, researchers ask a series of questions to determine who is and isn't working, what types of jobs they have, whether they're actively looking for work, etc.
That survey produced an eye-popping number: an estimated 873,000 more people reported being "employed" in September than in August. Reuters says that was the biggest one-month jump in that indicator since June 1983.
The figure on payroll employment — in this case, a gain of 114,000 jobs — is based on a survey of public and private employers.
How could 873,000 more people be working if only 114,000 jobs were added to payrolls? One reason: 582,000 more people said they took part-time work "for economic reasons" last month.
Our colleagues at Planet Money have previously reported about how BLS puts its numbers together and the steps it takes to keep them secret. Today, it adds a post on "5 Ways Of Looking At Unemployment."
Update at 8:40 a.m. ET. How Did The Jobless Rate Fall If Job Growth Was Slow?
An increase of 114,000 jobs in an economy with a labor force of more than 155 million people wouldn't alone account for a sharp drop in the jobless rate. So why did the rate decline three tenths of a point?
The Associated Press notes that: "The economy also created 86,000 more jobs in July and August than first estimated. ... The revisions show employers added 146,000 jobs per month from July through September, up from 67,000 in the previous three months."
The BLS report also says there were 456,000 fewer people counted as being among the unemployed last month.
Update at 8:35 a.m. ET. First Time Below 8 Percent Since January 2009:
At 7.8 percent, the jobless rate is back where it was in January 2009 and is below 8 percent for the first time since President Obama was sworn in that month.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/05/162352854/unemployment-rate-drops-to-7-8-percent-114-000-jobs-added-to-payrolls
U.S. unemployment update
The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Washington Post.
Unemployment rate falls to 7.8%
By Neil Irwin
The job market is finally showing some juice.The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September, the Labor Department said Friday, from 8.1 percent in July, its lowest since January 2009. It is a surprising show of improvement in a job market that had seemed listless in recent months. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reasons: Not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one.
Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought improvement of that measure of the job market as well.
Add it up, and what had seemed to be a summer lull in employment increasingly appears not to have been much of a lull at all.
While it is that headline number — the drop in the unemployment rate — that will surely capture the most attention in the final weeks of a hard-fought presidential campaign, if anything the inner details of the survey on which it is based reveal an even rosier picture.
The unemployment rate fell despite more people — 418,000 of them — entering the labor force. That brought the ratio of the American population with a job to its highest level since May 2010. Some 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, and 456,000 fewer reported not having a job but wanting one.
The timing was fortunate for President Obama’s reelection campaign, with the most closely followed barometer of economic health, the unemployment rate, falling back to the level it was when he was inaugurated.
Obama appeared buoyant as he touted the report during a late morning campaign event in Northern Virginia. “This morning we found out the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs,” the president said during a rally at George Mason University. “Now, every month reminds us we’ve still got too many of our friends and neighbors looking for work, too many middle-class families struggling to pay the bills.”
Earlier in the day, Republican challenger Mitt Romney focused on the pace of growth, saying in a statement that “this is not what a real recovery looks like.”
“We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office,” the statement said. “If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent.”
The response in the financial markets was positive but relatively muted, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index up 0.46 percent at 11:00 a.m.
It is important not to place too much weight on one report — although with its timing a month before the election, the September numbers tend to receive more attention than most. But altogether, the new numbers point to an economy that is not in as dire straits as it has seemed for much of the summer.
There has been some other evidence that consumers are feeling better about the state of the economy: The Conference Board’s consumer confidence number rose to 70.3 in September from 61.3 in August, and the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey showed a similar rise. Combined with strong gains in the Labor Department’s survey of households, that points to an improvement of conditions that ordinary Americans are seeing that is not visible in slower but more reliable data on production and output.
And indeed, that is reflected in the survey of employers on which the payrolls numbers are based. The 114,000 net new jobs reported by that survey — too few to bring the unemployment rate down over time — was dragged down in part by a 16,000 drop in manufacturing jobs, a sector that has been weak in recent months.
The Labor Department revised its estimates for July and August employment upward buy 86,000, so that in the last three months the nation added an average of 146,000 jobs a month. That is above the level of job creation needed to keep pace with an ever-growing population, about 125,000 a month.
The unemployment rate and the payroll numbers are based on separate surveys, of households and employers respectively, and thus sometimes diverge for brief periods. When American households report stronger gains than employers, as was the case in September, it can be a fluke, but it can also signal that there are gains in self-employment and in business start-ups that are hard to capture in the payroll numbers.
The Obama campaign, trying to recover from a stinging presidential debate performance Wednesday night, credited the dip in the unemployment rate to the president’s stewardship of the economic recovery. “While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment 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,” Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said on the White House’s blog.
Republicans emphasized that 7.8 percent joblessness remains high by any historical standard. Indeed, most economists believe that full employment would be something around 6 percent.
“While today’s unemployment report offered some encouraging news, it simply isn’t good enough,” added Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House Majority Leader, in a statement. “7.8% unemployment should not be cause for celebration.”
There will be one more employment report before the election, covering the situation in October, scheduled for release Friday, Nov. 2, in advance of the Nov. 6 race.
Staff writers Nia-Malika Henderson and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-rate-plunges-to-78percent/2012/10/05/bdb6e5bc-0ee7-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_print.html
Why the Election Will Turn Less on Wednesday's Presidential Debate Than on Friday's Jobs Report 30SEP12
The biggest election news this week won't be who wins the presidential debate Wednesday night. It will be how many new jobs were created in September, announced Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Rarely in the history has the monthly employment carried so much political significance. If the payroll survey is significantly more than 96,000 -- the number of new jobs created in August -- President Obama can credibly claim the job situation is improving. If significantly fewer than 96,000, Mitt Romney has the more credible claim that the economy isn't improving.
August's household survey showed the overall rate of unemployment to be 8.1 percent in August -- not bad, relative to previous rates -- but that was mainly because so many Americans had stopped looking for work. (You're deemed "unemployed" only if you don't have a full-time job and you're looking for work; if you've given up looking, you're not counted.)
What happened to jobs in August or September -- and what will happen in October (announced November 2, just days before Election Day) -- have very little to do with what Obama did or didn't do. Presidents have little to do with month-to-month changes in employment.
What's more, the rest of the world isn't cooperating: Much of Europe is in recession because it's swallowed the "austerity" cool-aide. Japan is still a basket case. And China is slowing considerably.
In addition, Obama has had to grapple with a recalcitrant Republican congress, whose "number one goal," according to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, hasn't been to create more jobs but to make sure Obama doesn't get a second term.
Still, evidence is accumulating that the U.S. economy is in a stall. According to Commerce Department data released late last week, the economy grew at an annualized rate of only 1.3 percent between April and June. That's down from 2 percent in the first quarter of the year. Consumer spending rose in August just .1 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Orders for durable goods (cars, TVs, other long-lasting manufactured products) dropped 13 percent, the biggest monthly drop in three years. And because incomes grew less than spending, the savings rate dropped to 3.7 percent -- the lowest since April.
Consumers say they're more confident about the future -- and that's a key measure for how they're likely to vote. But the disturbing reality is paychecks continue to shrink. Disposable income (the money left over after taxes) dropped 0.3 percent after adjusting for inflation. That's the weakest reading since November.
America is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. That's mainly because the nation's vast middle class, along with everyone aspiring to join it, doesn't have enough money to get the economy back on track. (The rich spend a much smaller proportion of their incomes, and their savings go around the world to wherever they can summon the highest return.)
Republicans have no answers. To the contrary, Romney's reverse-Robin Hood economics would give more tax cuts to the rich, shrink the middle class even further, and put a huge burden on the poor.
But the economic policies Obama says he'd like to pursue in his second term aren't nearly large or bold enough to do the job.
The median wage has been stuck in neutral for decades. All the gains from economic growth have gone to the top. The stagnation of middle-class wages was at first masked by millions of women moving into paid work, thereby propping up household incomes. Then it was masked by massive household borrowing against rising home values.
But those days are over. The bubble that burst in 2008 has removed both masks. The middle class and the poor who aspire to join it will have enough income to get the economy moving again only if and when they get a larger share of the gains from economic growth.
Perhaps the President will be asked Wednesday night for his plan to accomplish this.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-the-election-will-tur_b_1927805.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
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