nytimes.com— Ten months ago Barack Obama’s economic advisers projected two scenarios for unemployment. Now reality has produced numbers of its own.
Nov 16, 2009View in Crawl 4
"The first line ? the hopeful line, the one that was used to sell $800 billion worth of stimulus ? showed the rate of joblessness peaking this fall at 8 percent, and dropping swiftly thereafter. The second line ? the no-stimulus scenario ? showed unemployment peaking at 9 percent, holding there across 2010, and then declining in 2011 and 2012.Now reality has produced numbers of its own. In every month since May, the unemployment rate has been roughly a percentage point higher than the chart?s grimmer, stimulus-free scenario. This October, when Obama?s advisers predicted that unemployment would stand at 8 percent with the stimulus and just under 9 percent without it, the actual jobless rate leaped to 10.2 percent."
dsscheibeNov 17, 2009
"The first line ? the hopeful line, the one that was used to sell $800 billion worth of stimulus ? showed the rate of joblessness peaking this fall at 8 percent, and dropping swiftly thereafter. The second line ? the no-stimulus scenario ? showed unemployment peaking at 9 percent, holding there across 2010, and then declining in 2011 and 2012.Now reality has produced numbers of its own. In every month since May, the unemployment rate has been roughly a percentage point higher than the chart?s grimmer, stimulus-free scenario. This October, when Obama?s advisers predicted that unemployment would stand at 8 percent with the stimulus and just under 9 percent without it, the actual jobless rate leaped to 10.2 percent."