The employment situation finally improved somewhat in March, with an increase of 162,000 jobs, but there is still a long way to go!
The unemployment rate stayed stable at 9.7 percent, and the underemployment rate rose slightly to 16.9 percent.
The unemployment rate is worse among minority groups, particularly African Americans, and since so many people have been out of work for more than six months, and a substantial number for a year or more, there is little to celebrate.
This issue will be the crucial one in the upcoming Fall 2010 midterm elections, since people tend to vote their pocketbook above all considerations, even those who have secure jobs but worry about the overall economy and how it might affect the future for them and their children.
So the Democrats and President Obama must focus now on job creation, and hope that the economic turnaround, which seems to have begun, will continue to accelerate over the next six months.
If it does not, then the Democratic party losses this November will be greater, rather than less, and will make Obama’s challenge in the last two years of his first term all the more problematical!