There's a meme floating around that this election is all about jobs and that the top item for voters is jobs.
First off, I'm sorry for for everyone who has lost their job in the economic downturn and in general for the unemployed. I in no way want to imply that I don't think it is important to increase the number of available jobs. Also this discussion could easily be seen as influenced by politics, but I'm really just trying to understand the above statement.
The question is if jobs is the top issue on the minds of voters and if so why?
The unemployment rate is about 10% (which is big). But that's only 10% of people who are looking for a job who don't have one, there are a lot of people who have just given up on looking given the poor economy. Not sure what that number is, but I'm thinking it is reasonably to bump the unemployment rate up to 15% to include those who have stopped looking.
So of the people who want a job 15% don't have one. As a matter of economics and ethics that's very bad, but is a small portion of the voters. Let's assume that everyone who doesn't want a job is dependent on someone in the general population of workers (both employed and unemployed) then 15% of the overall population would be unemployed or depend on someone unemployed. I think that's probably an overestimate (we're talking potential voters so kids under 18 don't count), but let's go with it. We've still got 85% of the population to explain.
Let's for the moment assume that voters represent the population as a whole. Obviously untrue, but I don't think adjusting this assumption would help answer the question (we'd have to consider all the retired people who consistently vote).
There is a decent portion of the population that is underemployed because of a lack of jobs at their skill level. Let's say this equals our adjusted unemployment number, of all my guesses I have the least idea about this one. So now we've accounted for 30% of the voters.
There are only a few other groups I can think of:
1. People who are employed at the right level, but feel they'd be making more money or would like to make a job shift if there were more jobs. Not sure, but doesn't seem this would make jobs their top issue. At this point it seems something like healthcare would be just as important (in either political direction).
2. People who know unemployed people and are sympathetic or even don't know any and are super-sympathetic. Maybe I'm being too jaded, but again doesn't seem like enough to push it to the top of the list.
3. I thought I had another group, but the Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA I just drank is starting to kick in.
Maybe some portion of the above groups (including the one I forgot) makes jobs their top issue. Let's say a whole 20% of the population (which would require a fairly large portion of the above groups since they are only a portion of the total population) defies my jaded world view, that only bring us to 50% of voters. That's a lot but only on the edge of majority. I guess that if the rest of the issues have to split the other 50% then jobs would be the top issue. But not in the supermajority way that I think the meme represents.
This leaves me with only a few possibilities:
1. It's not true. Jobs aren't actually the top issue for voters.
2. The above analysis is correct (or close enough) and while jobs is bigger than any other issue, it isn't actually the top issue for more than half the voters.
3. I vastly misestimated the above numbers and/or left out some significant group that cares about jobs.
4. Jobs is the top issue of super-vocal voters, not voters as a whole.
5. Some group or groups have put the idea of jobs into the heads of voters who otherwise would have other top issues.
6. I'm just missing something completely. This seems very likely.
Again, I'm really asking. I'm not trying to make a point, I just don't understand, most likely due to a lack of knowledge. Although, now that I wrote all this out I'm thinking that something along the lines of #2 is correct, but this post took some time to write and I don't feel like deleting it.
