Are You Better Off? Here Are the Numbers
By: Yuval Rosenberg, |Fiscal Times
And the stock market has soared:
But, the unemployment rate, which hit 10 percent in October 2009, stands at 8.3 percent, still above the 7.8 percent of January 2009:
Total Unemployed, Long-Term Unemployment
And a more comprehensive reading of the labor picture including the underemployed is also significantly higher than it had been:
The labor force participation rate remains near a 30-year low:
Ronald Reagan famously suggested that voters ask themselves: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The economy clearly isn’t firing on all cylinders, but are Americans better or worse off than they had been when President Obama took office?
