Obama Advisers Predict Unemployment of 8.2% by 2012
The Obama administration projected Thursday that the unemployment rate would fall this year by only a little, if at all, and would remain well over 6 percent until 2015.The forecast was the most closely watched element of the annual Economic Report of the President, a 458-page document outlining the White House’s outlook and policies on areas as diverse as savings and investment, health care and climate change.
The report projected that an average of 95,000 jobs would be added to the payrolls each month this year — barely enough to keep up with the normal number of jobs the economy would have to create to meet the growth in the labor force and keep the unemployment rate steady.
Although the Labor Department has estimated that unemployment fell to 9.7 percent last month, the new report projected that the average rate for the year would be 10 percent. That would fall to 9.2 percent next year, the report said, and to 8.2 percent in 2012, when President Obama would be up for re-election.
The report also estimated that the nation’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, would grow 3 percent this year, in line with the projections for global growth of 3.1 percent by the International Monetary Fund, and 3.4 percent by the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
*SNIP*
“The usual relationship between G.D.P. growth and the unemployment rate has broken down somewhat,” Ms. Romer, who is on leave from the University of California, Berkeley, told reporters at the White House. “The unemployment rate has risen much more than one would have predicted.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment