The Number That Matters

The labor market indicator I see discussed most often is the unemployment rate. Sometimes people push into the "broad" unemployment measures. But in political terms, I doubt this is the most important indicator. After all, even at the depth of the Great Depression the unemployed were only a minority of the population. And there's little sign that high-unemployment demographic sub-groups (African-Americans, young people, high-school dropouts) experienced some kind of particularly sharp turn against Barack Obama.

Something better to think about may be the change in real personal disposable income:

Another point where this is relevant is the continued mumblings that there's nothing policymakers can do about unemployment since all this joblessness is "structural." The labor market has been delivering bad outcomes across the board, not just a targeted blow to a handful of suddenly unemployably inept individuals.