Unemployment spiked from 3 to 5% under Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Bush; and fell when Carter and Clinton took office. Since corporate profits improve by laying off workers, it's no wonder that a party with a distinct pro-business slant would promote policies that are, at a minimum, blind to the welfare of workers, or, at worst, increase unemployment. The job market is a market like any other, and manipulating supply-and-demand to increase supply benefits the demand--employer--side.

You know full well that 6% is the national average, and that obscures several important facts: The rate in the technology sector is as high as 19% around Seattle, over 10% in Silicon Valley and other tech centers. The tech sector could fairly be characterized as in a depression. Also, unemployment statistics only measure the number of people actively seeking work and collecting unemployment benefits. They do not include two important groups who've been impacted: "Discouraged" workers who've simply given up, which the BLS estimates at an additional 2-3%, which means that unemployment statistics are less and less accurate as time drags on; and people who have settled for lower-level employment and have had to downsize. It's a criminal waste of national resources that highly-trained engineers, programmers, and other once-valuable workers are pouring coffee and flipping burgers. The standard of living of way too many Americans has declined precipitously.

Gloating that the average is "only" 6% is an attempt to sweep the problem under the rug. It won't wash.