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The Labor Department says the economy added 120,000 jobs in March, down from more than 200,000 in each of the previous three months.

The unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009. But the rate dropped because fewer people searched for jobs. The official unemployment tally only includes those seeking work.

Despite the pullback in March, the economy has added 858,000 jobs since December – the best four months of hiring in two years.

Slower job growth could threaten a recent rise in consumer confidence and dent investors’ enthusiasm for stocks. It also could prove a setback for President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes.

But economists noted that it’s just one month after three solid gains.

“We are disappointed,” said Anthony Chan, chief economist at JPMorgan Wealth Management. “But when you go inside and lift the hood, the numbers look a little better.”

Treasury yields and stock futures dropped sharply after the report came out. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.09 percent from 2.20 percent, while Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures fell 0.8 percent to 1,381. Both were little changed in the minutes before the report was released.

Most U.S. financial markets are closed for the Good Friday holiday, and others are open for abbreviated sessions. The stock market is closed, but index futures are trading until 9:15 a.m. Eastern. U.S. government bond trading ends at noon.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has cautioned that the current hiring pace is unlikely to continue without more consumer spending.

Retailers seemed hurt most in March. They shed nearly 34,000 jobs in March after cutting nearly 29,000 in February. Temporary help firms dropped almost 8,000 – a potentially bad sign for the job market because companies often hire temp workers before adding full timers.

But Chan was more encouraged by healthy job growth in industries that are sensitive to changes in the economy: Manufacturers added 37,000 jobs, and hotels and restaurants added 39,000.

Government hiring was little changed in March, a positive sign after months of job cuts and the state and local level.

There also was improvement in a broader measure of weakness in the job market. The percentage of Americans who are either unemployed, have given up looking for work or have had to settle for part-time work fell from 14.9 percent in February to 14.5 percent last month.

More than 5.3 million Americans, or 42.5 percent of the unemployed, had been out of work for six months or longer in March.

Hiring was slightly better in January and February than first reported. The government revised up job growth in those months by 4,000.

Hourly wages rose 5 cents to an average $23.39. The average workweek, though, fell slightly to 34.5 hours in March.

Obama’s re-election hopes may depend on continued improvement in the unemployment rate and job creation.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the likely Republican challenger, this week blamed the president’s policies for slow growth and high unemployment.

The Obama campaign has said that Romney would reinstate policies that led to the recession – lower taxes for the wealthy and less regulation for business.

For many, what matters most is the unemployment rate. It was 7.8 percent when Obama entered office in January 2009 and peaked at 10 percent nine months later. Since August, it has dropped from 9.1 percent to March’s 8.2 percent.

No incumbent since World War II has faced voters with unemployment higher than 7.8 percent.

Other data suggest the economic recovery is gaining strength. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to a four-year low, the government said Thursday. Consumers are more confident and spending more.

The service sector expanded at a healthy clip in March and increased hiring, according to a private survey released Wednesday by the Institute for Supply Management. Factories are busier. Companies are investing more, ordering more machinery and other equipment.

Economists have worried all along that job growth couldn’t sustain the strong December-to-February pace.

They also worry that a 66-cent run-up in gasoline prices (to a national average $3.94 a gallon) so far this year will discourage consumer spending – though American households are more resilient financially after cutting their debts.

Most economists expect annual growth this year of just 2.5 percent. Normally, it takes annual growth of 4 percent to lower the unemployment rate 1 percentage point over a year.

The job market is improving largely because the pace of layoffs has fallen sharply. The staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday that planned layoffs fell 27 percent from February to March. Hiring, meanwhile, is still running nearly 20 percent below pre-recession levels.

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Clinton tells ABC’s “Good Morning America” he believes likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney will have a difficult time reconciling positions he’s taken during the primary season with what he’ll say against Obama in the fall.

Clinton was asked if Obama can argue that Americans are better off than they were four years ago, as he argued in winning re-election in 1996.

He replies that if Obama can’t make that case, “it is only because of the financial collapse that occurred in September 2008″ before Obama took office.

Clinton says Obama can assert that “we put a floor under the recession and kept it from becoming a depression.”

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The report represents the first time the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has come up with an official count of environmentally friendly jobs, an emerging part of the economy and a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.

Environmental groups cheered the report as an affirmation that green jobs are real factor in the nation’s economic growth. Obama has set a goal of creating 5 million green jobs and his stimulus plan provided $80 billion to help boost this sector.

“Critics and politically driven naysayers have been trying to convince us that clean energy and green economy jobs are a hoax,” said Bob Keefe, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said the sector would continue to grow “as long as we don’t let entrenched interests stop it.”

Republicans have questioned Obama’s focus, saying there has been little to show for all the money spent. They point to boondoggles like the administration’s decision to pump $528 million into California solar company Solyndra before it collapsed, laying off 1,100 wokers.

The report makes no assessment of when the jobs were created and says its figures are from 2010. It found 2.3 million green jobs in the private sector and 860,300 in the public sector.

In the private sector, manufacturing had the greatest number of green jobs with about 461,800, about 4 percent of all manufacturing employment. Construction was second, with about 372,000 jobs.

Vermont had the highest proportion of green employment at 4.4 percent, while Florida had the lowest at 1.3 percent. California had the largest number of green jobs, with 338,000 workers.

To make the count, the BLS developed a two-part definition of green jobs in 2010. The first part counts “output-based jobs” that produce goods and services benefiting the environment or conserving natural resources. That includes a company producing solar panels or a farmer growing organic tomatoes.

The second part of the definition covers “process-based jobs” where workers make a company more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources. That would include an employee at a manufacturing plant in charge of recycling, even if the plant itself is not green.

The report released Thursday includes only jobs under the first part of the definition. A second report counting process-based green jobs will be released later this year.

Coming up with an accurate count of green jobs was tricky because not every step of producing and delivering a green product is environmentally friendly.

Rick Clayton, chief of the division of administrative statistics and labor turnover at BLS, used the example of an organic tomato, which has an environmental benefit where it’s grown. But the process of being canned and then delivered by truck to a restaurant has no benefit to the environment, he said.

“To think that we could track an organic tomato would make the definition too broad and it would be uncollectible,” Clayton said.

The BLS surveyed 333 industries out of 1,193, and excluded those industries that have no primary environmental benefit, Clayton said.

Clayton said the BLS report is consistent with a 2010 report from the Commerce Department which came up with its own definition to find the number of green jobs in the private sector ranged from about 1.8 million to 2.4 million.

Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers has claimed that about 225,000 green jobs were saved or created through the first nine months of 2010. That that figure is not verifiable in the latest report.

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But trouble could be ahead: Still-struggling Americans are fretting over rising gasoline prices. Just weeks before the summer travel season begins, the Associated Press-GfK survey finds pump prices rising in importance and most people unhappy with how Democratic president has handled the issue.

It’s seemingly no coincidence that Obama this week is promoting the expansion of domestic oil and gas exploration and the development of new forms of energy.

It’s his latest attempt to show that he, more than any of the Republican presidential contenders, knows that voters’ pocketbooks remain pinched even as the economy improves overall. And on that question of empathy, solid majorities continue to view him as someone who “understands the problems of ordinary Americans” and “cares about people like you,” the AP-GfK survey found.

There is evidence that the nation is becoming markedly more optimistic, and that Obama benefits from that attitude.

Thirty percent in the poll describe the economy as “good,” a 15-point increase since December and the highest level since the AP-GfK poll first asked the question in 2009. Roughly the same share say the economy got better in the past month, while 18 percent said it got worse, the most positive read in over a year.

Looking ahead, four in 10 said they expect the economy to get better in the next year and a third said they think the number of unemployed people in the U.S. will decrease, the highest share on either question since last spring. A quarter of those surveyed said they expect the economy to get worse over the next 12 months, while 31 percent said it would stay the same, the poll found.

As optimism has risen, Obama has received a corresponding bump in his approval rating for handling the economy. Forty-eight percent now say they approve of how he’s handling it, up 9 points from December.

Still, for some it’s hard to sense an improvement – or give Obama credit for it – when any extra money is being gobbled up at the gasoline pump.

“I give him credit for trying to make improvements, but I don’t believe it’s had that much effect,” said Michael Lee Real of Indianola, Iowa, a city water authority worker who counts himself as a Republican-leaning independent. The cost of gasoline is “one of the big things,” says Real, 58. “It fluctuates so much, it makes it hard for me to budget my money.”

Overall, seven of 10 respondents called gas prices deeply important, up 6 points from December. Those who view gas prices as “extremely important” rose 9 points, to nearly 39 percent.

The average cost of a gallon has risen 30 cents in that time, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Views on the president’s handling of the issue are about the same as in December: Six in 10 respondents disapprove, including 36 percent who strongly feel that way, while 39 percent approve.

Presidents don’t have a great deal of control over oil or gas prices, which now are being influenced by higher U.S. demand and tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. But few factors generate as much interest and anxiety among Americans. The rise in prices, faced almost daily by voters, could undercut Obama’s argument that he’s strengthening the economy and making families more financially secure.

Though Obama’s approval rating on the economy has climbed, his negative rating on handling gas prices is stagnant. Just 39 percent approve of what he’s doing there, and 58 percent disapprove.

Republicans, locked in battle for the right to face Obama in the general election, expect gas prices to be a top issue by the time Americans set out on their summer vacations. The four vying for the GOP nomination already are warning of higher prices and are pushing for more drilling and relaxed regulations on domestic oil production. Some are talking dollars and cents: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is dangling the prospect of $2.50-a-gallon gas if he’s elected; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is warning of $5-a-gallon gas if he’s not.

Generally, the public’s approval of Obama has risen with the economy’s climb from recession.

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent in January, the lowest level in nearly three years. The housing market is flashing signs of health ahead of the spring buying season, with mortgage rates still low, sales of previously occupied homes at their highest level since May 2010, and more first-time buyers making purchases.

The nation is far from a full recovery. Millions of Americans remain out of work. And Wall Street investors still worry over the details of Greece’s economic bailout plan.

According to the poll, Obama’s overall approval rating ticked upward slightly, from 44 percent in December to 49 percent now.

The 9-point approval increase for his handling of the economy comes from Democrats and independents, constituencies crucial to Obama’s re-election hopes. Among Democrats, his approval on the economy has shot from 67 percent to 83 percent. Among independents, 49 percent now approve, up from 38 percent in December.

Obama also gained support among women during a period in which his administration seemed to stumble over whether religious employers should be forced to pay for contraception. In overall approval, Obama rebounded from 43 percent among women in December to 53 percent now, according to the survey.

And half of all adults now say Obama deserves to be re-elected, a 7-point rise from December that reverses a downward trend that had been in place since May.

More than eight in 10 Democrats say he should be elected to a second term, and half of all independents feel the same way, the survey found.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Feb. 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of 4.1 percent.

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But trouble could be ahead: Still-struggling Americans are fretting over rising gasoline prices. Just weeks before the summer travel season begins, the Associated Press-GfK survey finds pump prices rising in importance and most people unhappy with how Democratic president has handled the issue.

It’s seemingly no coincidence that Obama this week is promoting the expansion of domestic oil and gas exploration and the development of new forms of energy.

It’s his latest attempt to show that he, more than any of the Republican presidential contenders, knows that voters’ pocketbooks remain pinched even as the economy improves overall. And on that question of empathy, solid majorities continue to view him as someone who “understands the problems of ordinary Americans” and “cares about people like you,” the AP-GfK survey found.

There is evidence that the nation is becoming markedly more optimistic, and that Obama benefits from that attitude.

Thirty percent in the poll describe the economy as “good,” a 15-point increase since December and the highest level since the AP-GfK poll first asked the question in 2009. Roughly the same share say the economy got better in the past month, while 18 percent said it got worse, the most positive read in over a year.

Looking ahead, four in 10 said they expect the economy to get better in the next year and a third said they think the number of unemployed people in the U.S. will decrease, the highest share on either question since last spring. A quarter of those surveyed said they expect the economy to get worse over the next 12 months, while 31 percent said it would stay the same, the poll found.

As optimism has risen, Obama has received a corresponding bump in his approval rating for handling the economy. Forty-eight percent now say they approve of how he’s handling it, up 9 points from December.

Still, for some it’s hard to sense an improvement – or give Obama credit for it – when any extra money is being gobbled up at the gasoline pump.

“I give him credit for trying to make improvements, but I don’t believe it’s had that much effect,” said Michael Lee Real of Indianola, Iowa, a city water authority worker who counts himself as a Republican-leaning independent. The cost of gasoline is “one of the big things,” says Real, 58. “It fluctuates so much, it makes it hard for me to budget my money.”

Overall, seven of 10 respondents called gas prices deeply important, up 6 points from December. Those who view gas prices as “extremely important” rose 9 points, to nearly 39 percent.

The average cost of a gallon has risen 30 cents in that time, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Views on the president’s handling of the issue are about the same as in December: Six in 10 respondents disapprove, including 36 percent who strongly feel that way, while 39 percent approve.

Presidents don’t have a great deal of control over oil or gas prices, which now are being influenced by higher U.S. demand and tensions over Iran’s nuclear program. But few factors generate as much interest and anxiety among Americans. The rise in prices, faced almost daily by voters, could undercut Obama’s argument that he’s strengthening the economy and making families more financially secure.

Though Obama’s approval rating on the economy has climbed, his negative rating on handling gas prices is stagnant. Just 39 percent approve of what he’s doing there, and 58 percent disapprove.

Republicans, locked in battle for the right to face Obama in the general election, expect gas prices to be a top issue by the time Americans set out on their summer vacations. The four vying for the GOP nomination already are warning of higher prices and are pushing for more drilling and relaxed regulations on domestic oil production. Some are talking dollars and cents: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is dangling the prospect of $2.50-a-gallon gas if he’s elected; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is warning of $5-a-gallon gas if he’s not.

Generally, the public’s approval of Obama has risen with the economy’s climb from recession.

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3 percent in January, the lowest level in nearly three years. The housing market is flashing signs of health ahead of the spring buying season, with mortgage rates still low, sales of previously occupied homes at their highest level since May 2010, and more first-time buyers making purchases.

The nation is far from a full recovery. Millions of Americans remain out of work. And Wall Street investors still worry over the details of Greece’s economic bailout plan.

According to the poll, Obama’s overall approval rating ticked upward slightly, from 44 percent in December to 49 percent now.

The 9-point approval increase for his handling of the economy comes from Democrats and independents, constituencies crucial to Obama’s re-election hopes. Among Democrats, his approval on the economy has shot from 67 percent to 83 percent. Among independents, 49 percent now approve, up from 38 percent in December.

Obama also gained support among women during a period in which his administration seemed to stumble over whether religious employers should be forced to pay for contraception. In overall approval, Obama rebounded from 43 percent among women in December to 53 percent now, according to the survey.

And half of all adults now say Obama deserves to be re-elected, a 7-point rise from December that reverses a downward trend that had been in place since May.

More than eight in 10 Democrats say he should be elected to a second term, and half of all independents feel the same way, the survey found.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Feb. 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of 4.1 percent.

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Four years after winning the White House, Obama is dealing with a different economic and political reality as he seeks re-election. He’s focused less on a lofty vision for overcoming divisions and remaking Washington, and more on the most basic building blocks of middle-class economic security: a job, a house, a college education for the kids, health care, money for retirement.

What Obama describes as the American Dream can seem a spare, fundamental aspiration, tailored for a campaign that looks to be fought over who is best equipped to safeguard the interests of middle-class Americans.

The question is whether it will convince, even as Mitt Romney and the other GOP presidential hopefuls mount a counter-argument that the president has made the American Dream harder, not easier, to achieve. And Obama must overcome the grinding realities many voters confront daily, even with the economy showing signs of life: no jobs, mortgages they can’t pay, dwindling retirement funds and college savings.

The president is betting that if he shows voters he understands their yearning for economic stability and security, they’ll reward him over Republicans he’s casting as just watching out for the rich – even though he hasn’t succeeded in fully reviving the economy so far.

“If you’re willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home; not go bankrupt because you got sick, because you’ve got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement,” Obama said recently in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“That’s all most people want,” he said. “Folks don’t have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American Dream.”

The goals can seem almost humdrum in comparison with some of the rhetoric from Obama’s 2008 White House campaign. But the message sounds made for the times, with the country emerging haltingly from recession, the income gap widening and unemployment stuck above 8 percent.

“He can’t run on change because he’s the incumbent, and he can’t paint too rosy a scenario because things aren’t that rosy,” said John Geer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “He’s got to come up with a theme that appeals to voters, especially middle-class voters, alleviates their fears and gives them reason to believe the future will be better.”

The message also creates an implicit contrast with the portrait Democrats are trying to create of front-runner Romney as preoccupied with the concerns of the rich. But Romney is answering Obama’s message head-on, seeking a careful balance between sounding optimistic about the nation’s future and accusing Obama of destroying the American Dream.

“I’ve met Hispanic entrepreneurs who thought they had achieved the American Dream and are now seeing it disappear,” Romney said after his recent victory in Florida’s GOP primary. “We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.”

GOP candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich also have accused Obama of tarnishing American opportunity, as Republicans make clear that no matter their nominee, Obama’s claim to be the one to restore the American Dream is sure to be challenged.

The candidates’ focus on the American Dream is in itself a sign of the times, said Michael Ford, founding director of the Center for the Study of the American Dream at Xavier University. The phrase was coined during the Great Depression and since then has tended to become a central theme during economic downturns, Ford said.

He said rhetoric about the American Dream has been featured during this election cycle more than in decades, which he attributed to the tough times the nation has been suffering.

“It’s pretty basic stuff (Obama) talks about and I think as it turns out that’s pretty much where the dream is right now,” Ford said. “We can say the dream might have been lowered a little bit in terms of its aspiration but the aspiration is still there, and it’s always there.”

Some polling suggests that, despite voters’ continued unhappiness with the economy and Obama’s handling of it, the president may be convincing Americans he’s on their side. A recent CBS/New York Times poll shows people view Obama as the candidate who best understands the needs and problems of “people like you,” and see his policies as more apt than those of the GOP candidates to favor the middle class or the poor.

Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said “the viability of the middle class is the central economic challenge of our time, so I think that this is very essential in terms of this election.”

“He’s been talking about this for years, that there are certain things that are pillars of a middle-class life, and he’s been very focused on those things and addressing them as president,” Axelrod said.

An eye-popping 257,000 private-sector jobs were added in January. The unemployment rate went down to 8.3 percent, down from 8.5 percent in December. The unemployment rate for African-Americans dropped to 13.6 percent, a drop of over 2 percent from December. The big drop may have more to do with a new computation on total Black population than an actually large reduction.

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Obama delivers his third State of the Union address Tuesday in a capital and country shot through with politics, with his re-election campaign well under way and his potential GOP opponents lobbing attacks against him daily as they scrap for the right to take him on.

Obama’s 9 p.m. EST address to a joint session of Congress and millions of television viewers will be as much as anything an argument for his re-election, the president’s biggest, best chance so far to offer a vision for a second term.

Senior political adviser David Plouffe said Tuesday morning the president is “happy to have a debate” about his performance. Asked in an interview about Republican candidate Newt Gingrich’s description of Obama as the “food stamp president,” Plouffe replied, “It’s a cheap applause line for the Republican base.”

Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution, said, “Almost by definition it’s going to be at least as much a political speech as a governing speech.”

“The president must run on his record,” Galston said, “and that means talking candidly and persuasively with the country about the very distinctive nature of the challenges the American economy faced when he took office and what has gone right for the past three years, and what needs to be done in addition.”

With economic anxiety showing through everywhere, the speech will focus on a vision for restoring the middle class, with Obama facing the tricky task of persuading voters to stick with him even as joblessness remains high at 8.5 percent. Obama can point to positive signs, including continued if sluggish growth; his argument will be that he is the one to restore economic equality for middle-class voters.

Implicit in the argument, even if he never names frontrunners Gingrich and Mitt Romney, is that they are on the other side.

Obama’s speech will come as Gingrich and Romney have transformed the Republican campaign into a real contest ahead of Florida’s crucial primary next week. And he’ll be speaking on the same day that Romney, a multimillionaire, released his tax returns, offering a vivid illustration of wealth that could play into Obama’s argument about the growing divide between rich and poor.

Asked in an interview Tuesday about Romney’s relatively modest tax rate in the range of 15 percent, given that he’s a multi-millionaire, Plouffe said, “We need to change our tax system. We need to change our tax code so that everybody is doing their fair share.”

Obama will frame the campaign to come as a fight for fairness for those who are struggling to keep a job, a home or college savings and losing faith in how the country works.

The speech will feature the themes of manufacturing, clean energy, education and American values. The president is expected to urge higher taxes on the wealthy, propose ways to make college more affordable, offer new steps to tackle a debilitating housing crisis and push to help U.S. manufacturers expand hiring.

For three days following his speech, Obama will promote his ideas in five states key to his re-election bid. On Wednesday he’ll visit Iowa and Arizona to promote ideas to boost American manufacturing; on Thursday in Nevada and Colorado he’ll discuss energy; and in Michigan Friday he’ll talk about college affordability, education and training. Polling shows Americans are divided about Obama’s overall job performance but unsatisfied with his handling of the economy.

The lines of argument between Obama and his rivals are already stark, with America’s economic insecurity and the role of government at the center.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that Obama “can’t run on his record.”

The president has offered signals about his speech, telling campaign supporters he wants an economy “that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.” Gingrich, on the other hand, calls Obama “the most effective food stamp president in history.” Romney says Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society.”

Obama will make bipartisan overtures to lawmakers but will leave little doubt he will act without their help when it’s necessary and possible, an approach his aides say has let him stay on offense.

The public is more concerned about domestic troubles over foreign policy than at any other time in the past 15 years, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Some 81 percent want Obama to focus his speech on domestic affairs, not foreign ones; just five years ago, the view was evenly split.

On the day before Obama’s speech, his campaign released a short Web ad showing monthly job losses during the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, with positive job growth for nearly two Obama years. Republicans assail him for failing to achieve a lot more.

House Speaker John Boehner, responding to reports of Obama’s speech themes, said it was a rehash of unhelpful policies. “It’s pathetic,” he said.

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that Obama is not conceding the next 10 months to “campaigning alone” when people need economic help. On the goals of helping people get a fair shot, Carney said, “There’s ample room within those boundaries for bipartisan cooperation and for getting this done.”

Plouffe appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” with Ryan and Plouffe also was interviewed on NBC’s “Today” show and “CBS This Morning.”

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That’s the bright picture the Federal Reserve sketched in a survey released Wednesday. It said all but one of its 12 banking districts experienced some growth from late November through the end of the year.

Some sectors of the economy, notably housing, remain weak, the Fed said. But consumers spent more freely. Factories made more goods. Americans stepped up travel. And the auto industry enjoyed its best stretch of the year.

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Economists noted greater confidence in the tone of the report. For example, the central bank described auto manufacturing as “vibrant” in several districts. Consumer spending was deemed “robust” in the Dallas region.

“It has been quite a while since we have seen the Fed use words like vibrant and robust to describe any part of the economy,” said Brian Bethune, an economics professor at Amherst College. “I think one of the things driving the stronger language is that things are better than the Fed had been expecting.”

The one district that didn’t experience growth was Richmond, Va., although even there, the Fed said economic activity either “flattened or improved slightly.”

The report comes just six months after the economy nearly stalled under the weight of high food and gas prices and supply disruptions from Japan that slowed U.S. manufacturing.

The economy and the job market have both improved since then. And December may end up being the strongest month of 2011. Employers added 200,000 jobs. And the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent – the lowest rate in nearly three years.

“The Fed’s report Wednesday confirms what everyone else has been seeing in the economic data from retail sales to auto sales and manufacturing – activity is improving,” said Jennifer Lee, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Most of the Fed’s districts reported holiday sales increased over last year. In particular, New York and Dallas’ districts reported healthy gains. Boston, New York and Minneapolis reported exceptional growth in online sales.

Consumers are spending more on cars and travel, the survey noted. Auto sales in the Atlanta area were the best sales in more than two years. Boston, New York, Richmond and Atlanta experienced gains in tourism from a year ago. In Boston alone, businesses expect double-digit growth in hotel revenue in 2012.

U.S. manufacturing continued to lift the economy, particularly in industries that make heavy equipment and steel. That has helped boost energy, farming and auto manufacturing sectors, the report said.

The depressed housing market has hurt some manufacturers, and the Fed cited weakness among furniture manufacturers in the Richmond, St. Louis and San Francisco districts.

Inflation remained subdued, largely because high energy prices have eased. That may change in the new year. Oil has climbed above $100 a barrel again, and gas prices are creeping up.

The strength shown in the Fed survey reflected other positive economic reports.

Consumer confidence hit its highest point since the spring. U.S. automakers reported their two best months of sales for 2011 in November and December. And U.S. factories ended the year with their best month of growth since spring.

Most economists predict the economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the final three months of last year. That would be an improvement from the summer, when the economy expanded just 1.8 percent, and much better than the 0.9 percent annual growth rate in the first half of 2011.

Still, the U.S. economic recovery remains vulnerable. Europe’s debt crisis could lower demand for U.S. exports. Consumers may pull back on spending, especially if their wages continue to stagnate.

And Congress could decide not to extend a Social Security tax cut or long-term unemployment benefits, leaving many households with less income. Both measures expire at the end of February.

The Fed has been studying the economy’s progress but announced no new actions to try to energize it after its Dec. 13 meeting. That was taken as a sign of confidence that the economy was in no immediate danger.

But in the minutes from the meeting released last week, the Fed said it will start this month announcing four times a year how long it plans to keep short-term interest rates at existing levels.

The change is intended to reassure consumers and investors that they will be able to borrow cheaply well into the future. And some economists said it could lead to further Fed action to try to invigorate the economy.

The Fed’s next meeting is set for Jan. 24-25.

The Beige Book is released eight times a year. The findings from each of the Fed’s regional bank districts are all anecdotal; there are no numbers.

The idea is to detect trends in consumer spending, manufacturing and real estate, among other areas. Consumer spending is particularly important because it accounts for about 70 percent of gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.

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The White House plans a forum Wednesday, called “Insourcing American Jobs,” that will bring together business leaders who shifted work back home. The president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address that the event will discuss ways business leaders can return more jobs to the country.

“We’re heading in the right direction. And we’re not going to let up,” Obama said on the heels of the government reporting Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December.

Obama noted that the jobs report showed the economy added more than 200,000 private sector jobs last month and that more than 3 million private sector jobs had been added during the past 22 months. He said the nation was “starting 2012 with manufacturing on the rise and the American auto industry on the mend.”

The president said the U.S. couldn’t return “to the days when the financial system was stacking the deck against ordinary Americans,” citing his decision to install former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while the Senate was on break, circumventing Republican opposition to the appointment.

Obama said his “New Year’s resolution” to all Americans was to “keep doing whatever it takes to move this economy forward and to make sure that middle-class families regain the security they’ve lost over the past decade.”

New York Rep. Nan Hayworth, delivering the GOP address, said the jobs report showed the difficulty that many Americans face in finding work. Hayworth said the unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent for 35 straight months, “the longest such stretch since the Great Depression.”

“Leaders in Washington should have no higher priority this year than getting our economy back to creating jobs,” Hayworth said.

The New York congresswoman said House Republicans would promote small business and reduce government regulation.

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Nearly seven in 10 say the year gone by was a bad one, more than double those who consider it a success, according to the poll. But 62 percent are optimistic about what 2012 will bring for the nation, and more, 78 percent, are hopeful about the year their family will have in 2012.

Jeff Wolfe, 33, of Farmington, W.Va., said 2011 treated him well because he was able to find steady work as a lineman. But for the rest of the nation, things were “pretty rough,” with so many Americans looking for jobs, he noted.

“For the first time since 2009, I worked all year,” he said. Wolfe said he lost work in 2008 and again in 2010. But in 2011, the father of two school-age children said he was able to catch up on bills, buy his wife a new car and renovate his home.

Overall, the poll found 68 percent of Americans described 2011 as a bad year, compared with 29 percent who felt it was a good one.

A partisan divide, much like the one that ruled Washington this year, seems the only split in public opinion on 2011. Democrats were most likely to view 2011 positively (40 percent called it good), while independents and Republicans were less effusive. Beyond that, the poll found general agreement that 2011 is best left in the past.

Mary Burke, 57, of Ridgeland, S.C., felt economic pain in 2011. She saw prices rise for all of her expenses, from her light bill to groceries. “Paying $5 for a jar of mayonnaise is outrageous,” she said.

Food and gas prices surged in 2011, but the most recent Consumer Price Index shows inflation leveling off. November statistics from the government showed a year-over-year inflation rate of 3.4 percent, the smallest such rise since April.

The AP-GfK poll found consumers are sensing the change. Just 18 percent of adults expect consumer prices to rise at a faster pace in the coming year, the lowest share to say so since the poll first asked the question in March. Most (51 percent) expect prices to rise at the same rate or more slowly.

And as the nation’s economic fortunes overall appear to be tilting slightly positive, the public’s expectations for the economy in the coming year are at their highest point since spring. According to the poll, 37 percent expect economic improvement in the next 12 months, compared with 24 percent who think the economy will slide downhill. That’s the first time since May that significantly more people said things will get better than get worse.

On a personal level, 36 percent think their household’s financial situation will improve over the next 12 months, while 11 percent think it will worsen. Americans’ financial ebbs and flows affect their personal outlook for 2012. Those whose households have faced a job loss in the past six months or who describe their current financial situation as poor are less optimistic about what 2012 holds for them and their families than others, though that does not carry over to their forecast for the nation in 2012.

Optimism about the nation’s path varies with views of the economy’s direction. Those who say things have looked better in the past month are generally optimistic (79 percent), while just half of those who say things are getting worse feel positive about what 2012 holds for the country. And about 6 in 10 of those who distrust the two major political parties to handle the economy or job creation are pessimistic about how 2012 will turn out for the nation.

Burke said she is angered by politicians in Washington who she believes fail to look out for the interests of the American people.

“They don’t care about me and you,” she said. “They only care how they are going to line their pockets.” As for the economy and nation improving in 2012, she said, “I pray and hope.”

The partisan divide in impressions of 2011 persists in the outlook for 2012, with Democrats more optimistic than either Republicans or independents. But expectations for next year’s presidential contest appear not to be a factor. Most partisans on both sides foresee victory for their side in the November 2012 presidential election: Three-quarters of Democrats say they think President Barack Obama will win re-election; three-quarters of Republicans say he will not.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 8-12 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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In a recent BlackPlanet/NewsOne poll, 74 percent of African Americans polled approve of President Obama’s handling of the economy while 26 percent disapprove.

The poll stands in sharp contrast to the Gallup Poll conducted on August 14th which found 74 percent of American disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy, while only 26 percent of approve.

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Dipping! Obama approval rating on economy declines

According to Carney, the issue is not one of race. The president is helping Black people by working to boost the struggling economy and helping all unemployed Americans, he said.

“A lot of people have suffered through this great recession … this is not a political issue,” Carney said. “The American economy is the primary focus of this president and he’s very committed to assisting African-Americans and all Americans.”

Read more at The Grio.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama tapped labor economist Alan Krueger for a top administration post Monday, rounding out his White House economic team ahead of a highly-anticipated announcement next week on a new jobs initiative.

Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama said he expected Krueger, a former Treasury Department official and Princeton economist, to provide him with unvarnished economic guidance, not partisan political advice.

“That’s more important than ever right now,” Obama said. “We need folks in Washington to make decisions based on what’s best for the country, not what’s best for any political party or special interest.”

With the nation’s unemployment rate stubbornly stuck above 9 percent and much of the public deeply dissatisfied with Obama’s handling of the economy, the president has promised a new set of jobs proposals. He said Monday that he would make those announcements next week.

“Our great challenge as a nation remains how to get this economy growing faster,” Obama said. “That’s our urgent mission.”

Obama has already called for an extension of a payroll tax cut that expires at the end of the year and he wants to continue jobless benefits. Aides are considering other measures, including tax incentives for businesses to hire and direct infusions of government money into construction projects. The president has said he intends to call for additional long-term deficit reduction to help pay for the short-term spending his proposals would require.

In Krueger, Obama will gain an economist with expertise in unemployment and the labor market. If confirmed by the Senate, Krueger would replace previous CEA chair Austan Goolsbee, who left the administration earlier this month to return to the University of Chicago.

Goolsbee was the latest in a string of top White House economists to leave over the past year, forcing Obama to do a wholesale makeover of the economic team that came to the White House with him three years ago. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the only remaining top official left l from Obama’s original economics team. Last month, the Treasury Department announced that Geithner would stay on, ending speculation he would leave the administration.

Krueger spent the first two years of the Obama administration as an assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy. In 2010, he returned to Princeton University, where he has served on the faculty for more than 20 years.

While at Treasury, Krueger worked on the popular “Cash for Clunkers” program that gave people rebates for buying new, more fuel-efficient vehicles and the HIRE Act, which gave businesses tax incentives to give jobs to the unemployed.

Krueger is likely to become an important public face for the administration on the economy. Both Goolsbee and Christina Romer, Obama’s two previous CEA chairs, were frequent spokesmen for the president, appearing on television and at White House events to promote the president’s policies.

That role could be even more important in the coming months, as a host of would-be Republican successors travel around the country, campaigning hard for the GOP presidential nomination by focusing, in no small part, on Obama’s handling of the economy.

The national unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent and has shown little improvement over the past year, despite the more than $800 billion stimulus program that Obama got Congress to pass not long after he took office. The economy also has been on a dual track of slow growth and ballooning deficits, and Obama saw the nation’s credit rating downgraded by Standard & Poor’s earlier this year as he fought congressional Republicans for weeks for a program to slow the flow of red ink.

The White House and Republican congressional leaders ultimately agreed to a compromise deal to increase the government’s borrowing authority in early August, on the cusp of default, but the S&P credit rating was lowered from AAA to AA+, nevertheless.

Obama took to the road for a series of town-hall style meetings just before he went on vacation, seeking to explain his efforts to promote economic growth and attack the stubborn high joblessness.

Appearing earlier Monday on MSNBC, Goolsbee said that “we’re still in a pretty tough spot” on the economy.

“When you come out of a recession, especially one as deep as we were in, you can’t just go back to do what you were doing before,” he said. He said growth had picked up in 2010 but “this year we’ve taken some heavy blows.”

Goolsbee, who is expected to play an informal role in Obama’s re-election bid, said investing and focusing on the “industries of the future” are the kinds of policy directions the country needs to pursue. He also said he doesn’t think that bringing another stimulus program forward is necessarily a good idea, and instead suggested tax incentives for companies to hire.

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WASHINGTON — Americans’ views on the economy have dimmed this summer. But so far, the growing pessimism doesn’t seem to be taking a toll on President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects.

More people now believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows, and confidence in Obama’s handling of the economy has slipped from just a few months ago, notably among fellow Democrats.

The survey found that 86 percent of adults see the economy as “poor,” up from 80 percent in June. About half – 49 percent – said it worsened just in the past month. Only 27 percent responded that way in the June survey.

That can’t be good news for a president revving up his re-election campaign. Yet there are several hopeful signs for Obama.

Despite the perception of a weakening recovery, there has been no significant change in the number of people who say he deserves re-election: 47 percent as opposed to 48 percent two months ago. That’s a statistical dead heat with those who favor a change in the White House.

And more Americans still blame former President George W. Bush rather than Obama for the economic distress. Some 31 percent put the bulk of the blame on Obama, while 51 percent point to his Republican predecessor.

“I think Bush had a hand in it, too. Obama’s not totally responsible,” said Mary Parish, 68, of Troy, Tenn. An independent who voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, she said she doesn’t believe Obama has what it takes to heal the economy. “He’s a smooth-talking man. But he does not know what he’s doing.”

Obama also fares better than Congress in the blame department. Some 44 percent put “a lot” or “most” of the blame on Republicans while 36 percent point to congressional Democrats.

The gloomy economic outlook reflected in the poll, which was taken Aug. 18-22, follows a round of bleak government economic reports – on unemployment, the housing market and economic growth that fell below 1 percent for the first six months of the year. It was taken amid heightened worries of a new U.S. recession, fallout from a downgrade of the country’s credit rating and a spreading European debt crisis.

As the public’s outlook on the economy dips, so has approval for the president’s economic stewardship.

More than 6 in 10 – 63 percent – disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy. Nearly half, or 48 percent, “strongly” disapproved. Approval of his economic performance now stands at just 36 percent, his worst approval rating on the issue in AP-GfK polling.

Among Democrats, 58 percent approve of the president’s handling of the economy, down from 65 percent in June. Among Republicans, approval dipped to 9 percent from 15 percent.

Just 51 percent consider Obama a strong leader, down from 60 percent in June and 65 percent following the capture and death of Osama bin Laden in May. In June, 85 percent of Democrats in the poll called him a strong leader. Now, the number is down to 76 percent.

Of course, there are limits to what a president can do.

“I think he can nudge it along, but really, it boils down to the private sector,” said Dan Elliott, 42, of Hillsboro, Ill., an independent who voted for Obama in 2008 and says he’ll probably vote for him again.

Judith Lee, 63, a retired teacher from Great Diamond Island, Maine, said she’s a Republican who voted for Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed by his leadership style.

“I don’t think he is a very forceful leader,” Lee said. “His style of leadership seems to be to look for consensus and ideas from other people, and it seems to have been ineffective. And Congress seems to be deadlocked on problems.”

Some 75 percent in the poll said the country is heading in the wrong direction, up from 63 percent in June. Among Democrats, 61 percent chose “wrong direction” – up from 46 percent in June.

And for the first time for Obama in the poll, a majority of all adults said they disapprove of his overall performance – 52 percent, up from 47 percent in June. Among Democrats, approval fell 8 points, to 74 percent from 82 percent in June. Among Republicans, it fell to 11 percent from 22 percent.

Politically, the poll underscores the difficult time ahead for Obama as he seeks re-election in a shaky economy.

Unemployment increased to 9.2 percent in July, up from 9.1 percent in June. And most economists don’t expect it to decline much below 8.5 percent by the November 2012 presidential election. No president has won re-election with a jobless rate that high since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

So why hasn’t the rise in pessimism taken more of a toll?

Despite the general rise in gloom, it seems unlikely that liberal Democrats will flock away from Obama even if they have rising doubts about his agenda or economic leadership, analysts suggest. And independents, who helped elect Obama in 2008 and are now being actively wooed by both parties, did not exhibit significant changes in their approval levels.

It was at 44 percent, statistically no different from the 43 percent approval rating among independents in June.

“A lot is out of his hands,” said Penny Johansen, 65, a retired legal secretary from Tempe, Ariz. “There is only so much one person can do, and one person cannot be blamed for the acts of others.” Politically unaligned, she voted for Obama in 2008 and says she’ll probably do so again.

On related economic issues, 59 percent said they disapproved of Obama’s handling of tax issues, up from 53 percent in June. And 64 percent said they disapproved of his handling of the annual budget deficit, compared with 63 percent in June.

Sixty percent described the financial situation in their own households as “good,” about even with the level in June. Asked if they expected their financial situation to change over the next 12 months, 31 percent said they expected it to get better, 12 percent expected it to get worse and a majority – 56 percent – said they expected it to “stay about the same.”

As to creating jobs, some 44 percent said they would trust Democrats to do a better job, while 42 percent said Republicans would.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Aug. 18-22 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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Today the economy has 5 percent fewer jobs, and the unemployment rate has almost doubled since the onset of the last recession.

The NewYorkTimes.com reports:

“It would be disastrous if we entered into a recession at this stage, given that we haven’t yet made up for the last recession,” said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics.

Read more at NYTimes.com

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‎

A housing market that has 1 out of 4 owing more than what their house is worth, with millions who are at least 90 days late on paying their mortgage; record levels of foreclosure; banks afraid to give loans to individuals and businesses for fear of default; and an employment market that has over 1 of 5 in this country either out of work or working part time just to make ends meet, are just a few of the economic problems faced by many in this country.

NewsOne and I are concerned about the economic destinies and know that it is almost impossible for taxpayers to stay afloat without an organized financial strategy. This is why we have launched a series of posts and webisodes, sponsored by Toyota, to make sure that we are giving you tangible solutions to help you in navigating the financial obstacles presented in this volatile economy.

So take time to watch the videos, read the posts, leave comments, and send us messages about the issues that you would like to discuss.

This is your forum and opportunity to learn some valuable information and we want to be sure you get the most out each entry. I look forward to talking to you each week as we continue to rebuild this country and lead the way to an economic recovery through the teaching and implementing of fiscal responsibility!

Ryan Mack, Author of Living in the Village and President of Optimum Capital Management, LLC

Read all of the Your Money In The Black posts here, including:

11 Tips For The Unemployed

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House Speaker John Boehner’s Budget Control Act of 2011 is the current plan that congress will soon vote on. It is estimated to raise the debt limit by $2.5 trillion, and will reduce the deficit by about $915 billion, according to its revised version.

Here’s a little break down of what cuts will be made to some social services:

Social Security Administration

• Benefits for SSI, Medicare and Medicaid would fall by $2.5 billion over the 2012-2016 period and by nearly $12 billion over the 2012-2021 period.

Health Care

• Benefit outlays for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP would fall by $1.4 billion over the 2012-2016 period and by about $3.7 billion over the 2012-2021 period.

Student Loans

• Eliminate the subsidized loan program for graduate students. Beginning July 1, 2012, the bill would eliminate the interest subsidy on subsidized student loans for almost all graduate students while a borrower is in school, in the post-school grace period, and during any authorized deferment period.
• Eliminate loan repayment incentives. Beginning July 1, 2012, the bill would terminate, with one exception, the Secretary of Education’s authority to make incentive payments to borrowers to encourage the on-time repayment of their federal loans.
• Cuts To Pell Grants. Significant cuts to student Pell Grants are also expected. Many college students rely heavily on Pell Grants to fund their higher education.

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Yahoo reports:

According to a new Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of those surveyed say Bush is responsible for the “current condition” of the economy, compared to just 27 percent who blame Obama. Among self-described independent voters, a key 2012 voting bloc, the number shifts slightly: 49 percent point the finger at the former GOP president, while 24 percent blame Obama.

Read The Whole Story At Yahoo

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Republicans said that after a heated disagreement with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the president “abruptly” walked out of the meeting.

Democratic lawmakers, however, said that Obama gave a lecture to Cantor and Republicans and left the meeting because it had ended, not because of anger.

Mr. Obama did have ardent words for Republican lawmakers, however.

“Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I’ve reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this,” the president said just shortly before concluding the two-hour meeting.

The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday of a “huge financial calamity” if President Obama and the Republicans cannot agree on a budget deal that allows the federal debt ceiling to be increased.

The NYTimes Reports:

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said he raised the idea of taking what savings could be achieved now — roughly $1.4 trillion — and then having additional votes to raise the debt limit again before the elections in November 2012, with Republicans ultimately seeking a total of at least $2.4 trillion in cuts with no tax increases.

At this, Mr. Cantor said, the president “got very agitated, seemingly.” Mr. Cantor quoted the president as saying: “Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people with this.”

Then, Mr. Cantor said, “He shoved back and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out.”

Read More At NYTimes.com

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Gingrich’s comments come as the president is negotiating a new federal budget with Republicans, and just days after the latest job reports show few signs of economic recovery.

“Housing prices have dropped deeper than in the great depression and it’s very clear that under Obama’s job killing policies, we’re not going to get out of this deep unemployment.”

Read more at ABC News:

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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against the measure Thursday, demanding that poor middle-class Americans need to do more.

“I hear how they’re so caring for the poor and so forth,” Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. “The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility.”

Video Below:

Read More At HuffingtonPost.com

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Additionally, the economy added only 18,000 jobs in June, with 14.1 million people out of work, a slight increase from the 13.9 million unemployed Americans reported in May.

Black unemployment stayed at 16.2 percent, which is the second highest rate since Obama took office. In August 2010, the Black unemployment rate was 16.3 percent.

The NY Times Reports:

The numbers showed the continuing challenges of adding jobs to the economy even at a rate that keeps pace with population growth, two years after the official end of the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Friday’s report showed that 39,000 government jobs were cut in June. The previous month, 28,000 local government and 2,000 state jobs were cut, as states and towns dealt with tighter budgets.

Read More At NYTimes.com

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The Clinton Global Initiative America Jobs Summit’s goal is to share the best ideas and brainstorm new ones, so that individuals, cities, states, and companies can help grow the economy, despite strains in Washington.

The summit was streamed live on the CGI’s website.

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The stuttering and stammering when it comes to discussing this economy is making the president and his party look like some of the most confused individuals you have ever seen. When the May job numbers came out, they call it a bump in the road. If the economic news is not moving as fast as analysts and commentators like, they revert to blaming President George W. Bush’s porous stewardship of the economy in his final term. And when it is time to take ownership and accept the reality that it now boils down to them, they give that deer-in-headlights look.

Look, Mr. President, you wanted the job. Well, this comes with the job. If you do well, you get the praise, such as with the killing of Osama bin Laden (unless you bother to listen to a lot of your conservative media haters, who couldn’t even bring themselves to giving you credit). But when things aren’t going so well, such as our sluggish economy, you’re going to take the hit. So deal with it.

That’s why it was refreshing to see Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), and chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, make a forceful statement last week that her party owns this economy.

“We own the economy,” she said. “We own the beginning of the turnaround, and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery.”

Republicans reacted with glee to seeing a top Dem accept responsibility for the economy. They feel that it will be a yoke around the Democrats’ necks come the 2012 election.

That feeling is perfectly understandable, but not entirely a negative thing.

For anyone to suggest that today’s economy is worse than what we experienced in 2008 has to be nuts. It was stunning and debilitating to see a monthly jobs report that showed hundreds of thousands of jobs lost every month. By the end of the year, we had lost 2.6 million jobs. Yes, 2.6 million. My CNN buddy, Ali Velshi, was Mr. Doom with his daily reports on the stock market. Our nation was in a panic, and no one knew where to go and what to do.

Yet today, we have seen 25 consecutive months of private sector job growth. Have they been small? Of course! But I sure as hell would rather see the gaining of 30,000 and 50,000 or 100,000 jobs a month then to see us losing 584,000, like we did in December 2008. The issue is that economists say we need closer to 300,000 new jobs per month to get back to normal.

Well, it’s time for President Obama to stand up and say this is the new normal.

So, we better get used to it.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said repeatedly that it may be several years before unemployment falls below 7 percent. He said to expect slow growth. It’s time for our political leaders to stop lying to us, thinking we are going to return to the fast lane days. They need to make it clear that we’re driving in the school zone today.

Folks, we’ve been so used to riding high on the hog with our inflated economy that we don’t know what to do when it comes to reality. We lived through years of BS Internet companies, exploding off the pages with nonsensical valuations based on crack-like highs. And when the high wore off, we saw that we were in worse shape.

We’ve lived so far above our means with credit cards, a crazy homeownership market and outlandish spending habits that now we are paying the consequences for our actions.

So President Obama needs to make it clear: Our economy is slowly getting better, and we might as well accept the reality that we are not going to sprint our way out of this recovery. This will be a marathon.

Yes, no one wants to hear that. We want to present our usual American optimism that isn’t based on reality. Just be straight with the public and don’t present a fictitious perspective on where we should be. This isn’t 1984, so stop saying what President Reagan did. We didn’t face a near meltdown of our financial system, coupled with the massive job losses, and a housing disaster.

Dems should say, “Look, we came in with a mess, and we put the plan of action to work to get us out of the mess. Did some stuff work? Absolutely. Did some stuff not work? Sure did, and we’re fixing it.”

You say it with confidence and conviction, and you defend your policies, even when your critics are blasting you. Instead, we get a president and Democratic Party that twists and turns in the wind, hoping a voice of confusion will mollify the critics.

It won’t.

Yes, I’m grateful to have a job. But there is no guarantee I will keep it. So I’m saving my money, got all of my debts paid off, and hoping to ride this economy out like the three hurricanes I’ve lived through. It’s going to be a rough period for some time. I know it, we feel it, so let’s get used to it.

President Obama and the Democratic Party, no matter what you say or do, you’ll be judged on the economy. If you get thrown out of office in November 2012 because the American people think someone else can do better, fine. But there is nothing worse then getting booted from office when you weren’t even smart enough to go down fighting.

If President Obama and his administration, as well as his party, keep up their pitiful efforts in discussing this economy, go ahead and start drawing up plans for your library in Chicago. Because what they are doing now is embarrassing.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN analyst and the author of the book “The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin.” Please visit his website at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

A new poll shows that 44 percent of Americans believe the economy is worse off under President Obama than when George Bush was in office.

The poll, conducted by Bloomberg, shows that the continuing lack of jobs available for the American public is causing alarming concern of the president’s economic direction.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier this week, only one-third of Americans believe the country is headed in the right economic direction. Only 10 percent of Americans believe the unemployment rate will go under five percent in the next 2 years.

Unemployment is currently at 9.1 percent, while the African-American unemployment rate is at record highs slightly over 16 percent.

Read more at Huffington Post

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — President Barack Obama says the growth of the U.S. economy will depend in part on training new workers for jobs in the manufacturing industry.

During a speech at a Northern Virginia Community College campus on Wednesday, Obama highlighted the expansion of an industry-led initiative to boost training programs.

The effort, Skills for America’s Future, links businesses with community colleges to help students gain the skills they will need in the emerging workplace. It also encourages workforce development strategies, job training programs and job placements.

Obama says the initiative could help prepare 500,000 community college students for careers in manufacturing.

“Right now, there are people across America with talents just waiting to be tapped, sparks waiting to be lit. Our job is to light them. And there’s no time to lose when we’ve got folks looking for work, when we’ve got companies that need to stay competitive in this 21st-century economy,” he said.

The president’s remarks come a week after recent economic indicators showing that manufacturers cut 5,000 jobs in May, the first loss in that sector in seven months. The unemployment rate also ticked up to 9.1 percent.

Before Obama’s remarks, he toured the college’s Automotive Training Program including a General Motors Automotive Services classroom and a lab with hybrid vehicles.

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Just ahead of the government’s monthly jobs report for May, investors got a disappointing look at the trend in hiring over the last few weeks. The monthly report from ADP Employer Services, the payroll processing firm, said that private employers added 38,000 jobs in May, lower than expectations and the smallest increase since September 2010.

Economists said that the figure in the ADP survey, far less than the 175,000 jobs that had been forecast, could have been a reflection of severe storms in many parts of the country that month, while automobile manufacturers have temporarily laid off workers in response to a disruption in supply chains. Economists from Capital Economics Ltd. said in a research note that the dip also reflected a slowdown in the growth in the service sector.

Worried investors are funneling their funds into bonds, a much safer investment vehicle, illustrating a lack of faith in the much-touted economic recovery.

Read the rest on The New York Times.

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Blacks in the survey reported feeling less stress from the economic situation than whites or Hispanics. Fifty-six percent said the current economic situation has not been a cause of stress for them while 56 percent of whites and 58 percent of Hispanics says it has.

Whites had a distinctly more negative view of President Obama’s economic program than blacks or Hispanics. Eighteen percent of whites said Obama’s policies had improved the economy, 36 percent said they had made it worse, 39 percent said they had no effect and 6 percent offered no opinion.

Read more at  Daily Beast

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ILLINOIS — Some Chicagoans are heading to the suburbs to fill up their tanks, as gas prices continue to climb in the city limits.

According to the latest Lundberg Survey of fuel prices, Chicago has the highest gas prices in the country. While the average price of gas reportedly rose by 12 cents in the past two weeks, Chicago is well above the national average–paying about $4.27 per gallon.

Many Chicagoans are paying more than that, however. Chicagogasprices.com reports that a Northwest Side BP station is charging $4.69 per regular gallon, and prices remain in the $4.30-$4.50 range throughout much of the city.

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“That’s why I’m only putting 10-bucks in here and then going up to the suburbs in Lake County and put the rest, that’s my plan right now,” Chicagoan Mark Jacobsen told Fox Chicago.

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Prices in the suburbs range from $4.07 per gallon at the Costco station in Melrose Park to the $4.20 range in some southwest suburbs, according to Chicagogasprices.com.

President Obama discussed the issue of high gas prices in his weekly address, and told donors in Los Angeles that prices at the pump have quite an impact on his polling numbers.

“These gas prices are killing you right now,” Obama said at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, acknowledging that many Americans can’t afford new fuel-efficient cars and must drive older models.. For some, he said, the cost of a fill-up has all but erased the benefit of the payroll tax holiday that he and congressional Republicans agreed on last December.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk pitched some ideas for alleviating pain at the pump in Illinois last week. He said exploring natural gas supplies, speeding up the offshore drilling permit process in the Gulf of Mexico and easing federal regulation would bring down prices quickly.

“If the market saw Congress moving in this bipartisan direction, it would see larger supplies in the future and that would directly affect the futures market. The price of gasoline right now is artificially high because the markets see a constriction of supply,” Kirk said, according to WBEZ.

The Associated Press reports that the latest Lundberg Survey puts the average price for a gallon of regular gas at $3.88, as of April 22. The national average for a gallon of mid-grade is $4.02, and $4.13 a gallon for premium.