Employment:
January 2009: 142 million.
January 2012: 142 million.
Wow I'm in awe of those of you who worship this crap. Wall street loves what Obama has done. He is solidifying the transfer of wealth that was in process when he was elected. No new jobs. Despite population growth of how many millions, this country has no new jobs. All on the back of 5 trillion+ drunken sailor deficit spending.
Crackheads of the world unite! Paul Krugman is callin you.
I agree that workforce participation and even more so, the total number of jobs (and even more so, the total payroll) are much more important than unemployment, especially since the Obama administration took over unemployment figures. Didn't employment get worse in 2010 & 2011 though? If we dropped and then clawed our way back to 2009 levels, that's still a good thing.
Subjectively, things seem to me to be getting noticeably better. I know we're totally jammed, to the point that we just hired another engineer (and we laid off no one during the recession.) I do agree that outsourcing and off shoring are destroying our nation in the long run, but until we as a people decide to change that, no President is going to change that. That's the beauty of democratic representation; we get the leadership we deserve, not the leadership we need or want. What could be more fair? Why should we have a President to save us from companies shipping jobs out of the country when we make the decisions what to buy?