Obama's speech: uplifting but short on specifics
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Robert Reich Guest blogger
President Obama鈥檚 speech to the Democratic National Convention was long on uplifting rhetoric but short on specifics for what he鈥檒l do if reelected to reignite the American economy.
Yet today鈥檚 jobs report provides a troubling reminder that the economy is still in bad shape. Employers added only 96,000 nonfarm jobs in August. True, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1% from July鈥檚 8.3%, But the size of the workforce continued to drop, according to a Labor Department report Friday.
Unfortunately for the President 鈥� and the rest of us 鈥� jobs gains have averaged only 94,000 over the last three months. That鈥檚 down from an average of 95,000 in the second quarter. And well below the average gain of 225,000 in the first quarter of the year And compared to last year, the trend is still in the wrong direction: a monthly average gain of 139,000 this year compared to last year鈥檚 average monthly gain of 153,000.
Look, I desperately want Obama to win. But the one thing his speech last night lacked was the one thing that was the most important for him to offer 鈥� a plan for how to get the economy out of the doldrums.
Last week Mitt Romney offered only the standard Republican bromides: cut taxes on the rich, cut spending on programs everyone else depends on, and deregulate. They didn鈥檛 work for George W. Bush and there鈥檚 no reason to expect they鈥檒l work again.
But the President could have offered more than the rejoinder he did 鈥� suggesting, even in broad strokes, what he鈥檒l do in his second term to get the economy moving again. At least he might have identified the scourge of inequality as a culprit, for example, pointing out, as he did last December, that the economy can鈥檛 advance when so much income and wealth are concentrated at the top that the vast middle class doesn鈥檛 have the purchasing power to get it back on track.
Undeniably, we have more jobs today than we did at the trough of the Great Recession in 2009. But the recovery has been anemic 鈥� and it appears to be slowing. We鈥檙e better off than we were then, but we鈥檙e not as well off as we need to be by a long shot.
