Governor Rick Snyder says he doesn’t think voters should base their election decisions on month-to-month changes in jobs numbers. The nation’s new unemployment rate was released Friday.
As Michigan Public Radio’s Rick Pluta reports, this is the final national jobs report before the election next Tuesday.
The new national unemployment rate is seven-point-nine percent; a slight uptick from the month before. It was due largely to long-term unemployed people re-connecting with the workforce to hunt for jobs.
The governor says a monthly shift in the employment picture is less important than longer-term trends.
“People hopefully don’t read too much into near-term statistics anyway ‘cause we’re getting down to the wire here," he says. "And it’s really the question for both candidates, and I’ve said that from the beginning, what are they going to do to create more and better jobs and a future for our kids.”
The governor is a Republican who supports Mitt Romney for president. The unemployment rate was 7.8% when President Obama took office in January of 2009. The breakout of Michigan’s monthly unemployment rate will be released on November 14th.