Job growth sluggish in swing states; New Hampshire, Wisconsin see loss.

A Map To Panic the Obama Campaign: Job Growth (and Loss) in Swing States

A Map To Panic the Obama Campaign: Job Growth (and Loss) in Swing States

A partnership of Slate and the New America Foundation.
June 15 2012 9:26 PM

A Map That Should Panic the Obama Campaign

Jobs growing, but sluggishly, in most swing states.

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Conventional wisdom holds that the economy will determine President Obama's re-election chances, and that what really matters to voters is whether they see their own prospects improving or fading. So what does the jobs picture look like in key battleground states? New Hampshire and Wisconsin actually lost jobs over the past year.  Most other swing states saw a fraction of a percentage point of growth, trailing the national average of 1.3 percent growth. Although such measly improvement is not to be discounted, it doesn’t come close to compensating for job losses in previous years. Mouse over any state to see a decade of data. Note: The Pew Center on the States' Stateline news service compiled and analyzed the Bureau of Labor Statistics data used in this map, and has visualized it in a very different way.

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Nick McClellan is web production manager of NewAmerica.net.

Troy K. Schneider is New America’s director of media and technology.