In and around Dayton, Ohio, a region that has endured a wrenching shift from dependence on the auto industry to new sources of growth such as distribution warehouses and information technology, disappointment with Obama is often balanced by wariness of his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
"I don't know if there's anybody I'm going to vote for," Forsyth said of the candidates.
Limited Opportunity
While the U.S. unemployment rate fell from a peak of 10 percent in October 2009 to 8.2 percent in March, the jobs data that dominate public discussion obscure a shift that has limited opportunity for workers such as Forsyth.
Ninety-five percent of the net job losses during the recession were in middle-skill occupations, such as office workers, bank tellers and machine operators, according to research by economists Nir Jaimovich of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
The job growth since has been clustered in either high- skill fields inaccessible to workers without advanced education or low-paying industries, they found.
In March, 3.2 million fewer Americans held sales and office jobs than five years earlier, and 1.2 million fewer were employed in transportation and production fields, all areas that typically pay middle-income wages, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Dayton's Dreams
By contrast, the number of better-paid managerial and professional employees grew by almost 2 million over that period and employment in lower-paying service jobs expanded by 1.5 million.
In Dayton -- the birthplace of aviation and such inventions as the mechanical cash register, the self-starting car engine, the stepladder and cellophane tape -- these trends have diminished incomes and curtailed dreams.
Mandy Copeland, a 34-year-old occupational therapy assistant, and her husband, a heating and ventilation technician, have given up hope of trading their three-bedroom ranch house for a home with a basement that they could turn into a recreation room for their three children.