July Jobs Report: Twitter Responds

The July jobs report came out today, and while the United States added 163,000 jobs last month, unemployment grew to 8.3 percent.

And while there were mixed feelings being expressed on Twitter, the majority of tweets regarding the July jobs reports reveal that the Twitter community is not on the president’s side on this one. The Twitter Political Index, which analyzes the favorability of tweets mentioning Obama and Romney “shows that tweets discussing Obama and the economy are consistently gloomy.” The Political Twitter Index also shows that since the beginning the May, tweets mentioning both Obama and the economy have been more negative than over 85% of all other tweets on the social media platform Twitter. Ouch.

Despite these findings, Barack Obama remained positive, focusing on the increase in jobs, tweeting:

Mitt Romney, however, focused on the second number in today’s jobs report: unemployment. He tweeted,

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Former two-term Governor Gary Johnson and Dr. Jill Stein have not yet commented about today’s jobs report on Twitter. In the meantime, take a look at some other responses to the jobs report, as seen on Twitter:

What do you make of the July jobs report? Is it “a solid, encouraging number,” as Austan Goolsbee, a former chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers suggests? Or is America’s recovery too slow?