Remember When Obama Promised Unemployment Would be at 5.2% by Now?

Lest we forget, when Obama tried to sell us on his stimulus the White House's projections showed the U.S. should be at 5.2% unemployment in October 2012. Instead it's 7.9%.

But all this is old news, right? And the economy was just so much worse under Bush that nobody could have done better and there was an oil spill and a European debt crisis and my shoes were too tight and my belt was too loose.

I'm a little tired of the excuses.

Only a few more days, and then when can see what havoc a lame-duck Obama will wreak.

From the James Pethokoukis article at AEI:

"Now let’s put those numbers in context:

"1. If we suddenly had a string of months where job growth was the same as in October, it would take 7 more years — until 2019 ! — to get back to the Bush unemployment low of 4.4%. Even if we averaged 210,000 jobs a month, we wouldn’t close jobs gap until 2021.

"2. We are now 41 months into the recovery, and we have recovered just 55% of the 8.9 million lost private sector jobs from the Great Recession. During the Reagan recovery, it took just 10 months.

"3. Back in early 2009, White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein predicted the unemployment rate would be 5.2% in October 2012 if Congress passed the $800 billion stimulus. As the above chart shows, they weren’t even close.
 

"4. In October, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 1 cent to $23.58. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen by 1.6%. Yet inflation is up 2% over the past year. That means worker take-home pay is declining.
 

"5. As economist Doug Holtz-Eakin notes: 'Average weekly hours of work declined. Average hourly earnings declined. The average weekly earnings and index of weekly hours showed sharp declines.' Not good.
 

"6. The shrunken workforce remains shrunken, although the labor force participation rate did nudge up last month, a good sign. But if the labor force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.6%.
 

"7. If the participation rate had just stayed steady all year, the unemployment rate would be 8.2%.

 

"8. The broader U-6 gauge, which also measures underemployment, dropped just a smidgen to 14.6%."

And there are those celebrating these numbers?