Posted on May 4, 2012

Romney Sets Expectations (Too?) High For Presidency

Says 500,000 jobs/month and 4 percent unemployment is cause for celebration, but that's a tall order.

BuzzFeed Staff

Mitt Romney criticized President Barack Obama for celebrating the decline in the unemployment, but set a high bar for his own administration if he were to win in November.

"Anything over 4% is not cause for celebration," Romney said at a rally in Pittsburgh today.

Earlier on Fox and Friends, Romney said the 115,000 jobs created in April wasn't enough.

“We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created every month. This is way, way, way off from what should be happening in a normal recovery,” Romney said.

“We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up,” he added. “This is not progress. This is very, very disappointing and a lot of American people are having very hard times, and this is not good news.”

Romney's statements may make for good electoral politics, but may well prove to be a headache for Romney if he wins the election in November. His promises will prove to be difficult to deliver on — the unemployment rate has not been below 4 percent in the past decade, and there have been just a few months with 500,000 job growth months since 1950.

Indeed, while Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the unemployment rate in his state never dropped below 4.6 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.