Well, the President came out with some decent stuff during his State of the Union address the other day (January 20), and offered a great deal of assurances to the American working (and non working class) that things are at least moving in the right direction.
In fact, his speech was so rousing and well received that a full 81% of the voters polled by CNN, rated it as very positive or somewhat positive. Not too bad for a sitting President that has been under constant fire from the other side of the aisle for the past 6 years.
Among all of the things he covered during his just 3 seconds shy of one hour long speech, the economy and the employment rate figures took up an appropriate amount of time.
But before I get to all of that, let me just say two things here and now:
First, I am an unabashed Obama supporter. Always have been. Always will be.
Second, My blog tries not to be political. I concentrate on unemployment from a personal standpoint – how it affects you and your personal life. But it’s sometimes difficult to ignore what happens center stage. After all, what happens in Washington as well as state capitals around the country could have (and probably did) affect your current joblessness condition. For that matter, what happens regarding national, state and local issues could affect the future of your joblessness condition.
Now that I have given you the disclaimers, let’s get back to what happened the other night.
At worst, all Presidents lie. At best, all Presidents stretch the truth. And on Tuesday evening, regarding the current employment figures, the truth was, as Bob Uecker used to say, “Juuuust a bit outside.”
Among the claims President Obama made in reference to the employment/unemployment statistics was, “Over the past 5 years, our businesses have created more than 11 million jobs.”
Nice.
But the usual caveats are appropriate here. While it is true that so many jobs have been created during the past 5 years, over half a million federal, state and local government jobs have been lost (many in the teaching field). Add to that, the fact that since his time in office, the U.S. lost millions of jobs in both the private and public sector. Boil it all down, and what you get in a net increase of about 6.4 million jobs that have been added during this time.
Not bad, but not the 11 million plus he spoke of. Better than the Bush or Reagan administrations, and far below the Clinton era’s 18 million. A long way to go. But encouraging nonetheless.
One last thing, before I am done here for the day, The president also stated that wages for those that have jobs are finally going up.
Yay.
True, but between 2013 and 2014, the average rise in hourly wages went up a whopping 40 cents. Average weekly incomes rose about 2.5 percent during that same time period.
Look, I get it. State of the Union addresses are very political, and represent the arguments for an administrations policies. This means that actual context is often missing in them.
What do I mean by “context?” Ummm…. you. I mean you. You are here reading up on advice for the unemployed. The talk about joblessness in this country is all fine and well, but right now, you aren’t in the overall conversation. And you need to be.
It’s really pretty simple: Let us all help each other stay better acquainted with support and advice on helping everyone who enters this forum in the quest for finding a job, as well as help in dealing with the day to day personal problems unemployment brings.
My Advice? Stay with me.
RealAdviceForTheUnemployed