September unemployment is 9.8 percent

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by GMScud

I'm not disagreeing with you here. I'm just curious though- Obama said the #1 goal of the stimulus is to create 3 million new jobs in two years. I don't have any figures in front of me as to how many adult Americans are unemployed currently, but I would think that if fully successful, 3 million new jobs would swing the rate by more than .5%.

Although I guess it doesn't really matter considering we're around 8 months into those 2 years and unemployment is still rising.

Well let's do some rough math. 300 million american citizens, assume 60 million or so are seniors, another 60 million or so are 18 or under, that leaves 180 million. Then some won't be in the workforce for a number of reasons. So figure there are 150 million in the workforce.

Create 3 million jobs, that represents 2% of the workforce.

But then a lot of those jobs Obama is creating are not permanent ones. So while they create a total of 3 million, it doesn't count the ones that go away once a project is finished (infrastructure projects).

So figure a 1-2% improvement in unemployment, based on this very rough math. So now reflecting on it, if fully successful, it's a little better than I first thought.

But still, unemployment is at 9.8%, and if stimulus got a 2% improvement, that's still 7.8% unemployed. Historically very high. There's just nothing any administration could ever do to keep us at the 4-5% we're used to.