Thursday’s U.S. Department of Labor report on weekly unemployment insurance claims, shows the number of Americans filing for weekly unemployment benefits fell to the lowest number since 2008 last week.
That’s more good news for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, as the Labor Department report shows filings for unemployment insurance dropped by 13,000 during the week starting February 6th.
The four week average of the weekly unemployment insurance data was a reported 365,250 for last week, The New York Times reports.
That marks the fourth drop in that category for the fifth straight week, and the report comes following a month where the national unemployment rate dropped for the fifth straight month to 8.3 percent.
Also in January, the U.S. added 243,000 jobs and has added an average of more than 200,000 jobs for three consecutive months.
If the economy continues to improve, Mr. Obama will be able to present the unemployment data as a counter argument to Republican claims that his policies over the past four years have failed to address the U.S. economic recession that lead to high unemployment rates during his presidency.
Despite the recent uptick in Republican candidates and media focus on social issues such as contraception and abortion, voters are likely to focus on the health of the economy in the upcoming election following one of the worst economic periods in U.S. history.
The Labor Department report on Thursday also showed that continuing claims for unemployment dropped by 100,000 for the week ending on February 4th. Continuing claims are those filed by workers for more than one week.
The number of continuing claims dropped to 3,426,000, which was the lowest number in that category since August of 2008.
That would also help give Mr. Obama more credibility against the Republican argument that unemployment rates are improving because unemployed workers has simply stopped looking for jobs.
Although the latest unemployment claims report show improvement, unemployment still remains unusually high in the U.S. with more than 13 million workers still searching for jobs.
Unless the unemployment rate starts to dramatically drop lower and jobs continue to be added, Republican candidates will still have a good case of using the struggling economy against Mr. Obama in the upcoming election.
The president released his 2013 fiscal year budget this week, and touted it as containing provisions that would spur job growth and help struggling middle class families with proposed tax reforms.
Mr. Obama has also been making a push recently for Congress to aide him in creating a better business climate in the U.S. for American businesses to spur domestic job growth, and stop shipping jobs overseas.
The president visited a Wisconsin manufacturing plant Wednesday and gave a speech urging Congress to draft tax reforms that would give American businesses more incentive to create more jobs domestically.
“It is time to stop rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that are creating jobs right here in the United States of America,” said Mr. Obama. “This Congress should send me these tax reforms right now, I will sign them right away.”
