The unemployment rate for May rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April. In addition, the original job numbers reported for both March and April have been revised downward.
The unemployment rate has now been above 8 percent for 40 consecutive months. Long-term unemployment remains the worst it’s been since the Great Depression, and the labor-force participation rate remains abysmal.
When selling your $800,000,000,000 stimulus plan three-and-a-half years ago, you asserted the unemployment rate today would be around 5.5 percent. How much more time is required for your policies to lower the unemployment rate to that level? What evidence do you have that your policies will be any more effective than they’ve been thus far in lowering the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent?
Given that it’s unlikely that Congress will approve another stimulus even remotely approaching $800,000,000,000, what employment policy initiatives do you plan to propose in a second term that will yield greater success than those you’ve implemented to this point? Why will such initiatives be more successful?
What encouraging signs do you see in today’s jobs numbers?