Ben White, Politico’s chief economic correspondent, and Better Markets CEO Dennis Kelleher assess Mitt Romney’s take on the October jobs report with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer. The unemployment rate rose slightly, from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent, a fact Romney used to attack President Obama.
“I’m frankly sort of surprised that Mitt Romney would focus on the 7.8 to 7.9 increase in the unemployment rate, which as Secretary Reich pointed out, is purely the result of more people looking for jobs. It’s actually a positive signal,” White says, arguing that wage stagnation is actually the most worrying economic indicator in the jobs report.
Kelleher agrees: “Real wages — wages after inflation — have been dropping for a significant period of time.”
