Arriving in the White House during a financial crisis, Obama concentrated on stopping a downturn that many economists feared could turn into a depression. He pressed for an $831 billion stimulus package and an auto-industry bailout. He cut taxes for middle-class workers and backed a health-care overhaul that he said would help middle-income families by keeping medical costs down and easing access to insurance coverage.
To promote a skilled workforce, the Obama administration has stressed support for education, including aid to local schools to reduce teacher layoffs. It has emphasized infrastructure improvements to promote competitiveness and backed clean-energy technologies that could provide future jobs.
Romney says deficit spending to finance the stimulus, uncertainty generated by the health law, and tighter regulation of the financial industry have deterred businesses from hiring. He backs reductions in government spending and tax cuts, including for wealthy "job creators" to spur investment.
Nothing Obama has accomplished in office so far has stopped what Siu calls "the hollowing out of the middle."
No Overnight Fix
Just 19 percent of registered voters believe the president's policies favor the middle class, compared with 25 percent who say they benefit the rich, according to a CBS-New York Times poll conducted Feb. 8-13. Still, asked to choose which candidate would do a better job protecting the middle class, 49 percent say Obama and 39 percent Romney, according to an April 5-8 ABC News-Washington Post poll.
"The economic crisis, deep recession and wage stagnation weren't created overnight and they won't be solved overnight," Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. "While we are making progress and the economy is growing and creating jobs, too many middle class families are still struggling to recover from the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes caused by the reckless economic policies of the past."
Fundamental Forces
Siu and other economists attribute the phenomenon to such fundamental forces as the movement of production offshore to lower-cost countries and technological gains that have made U.S. companies more efficient. Even with 5.2 million fewer Americans employed since January 2008, the U.S. is turning out more goods and services than before the recession, one reason corporate profits hit record levels and wealthy investors prospered.
Robots are replacing factory workers. Airport kiosks are taking the place of ticket agents. Intuit Inc.'s TurboTax software performs the work of accountants.
"This is early days. We see the next 10 years as being more disruptive than the last 10," said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business and co-author of the book "Race Against the Machine." He cites developments in artificial-intelligence technologies such as those in Google Inc.'s experimental self-driving car, International Business Machine Corp.'s Jeopardy-playing Watson computer, and Apple Inc.'s Siri voice-recognition software.
Plant Closing