Obama calls for a higher minimum wage

The national unemployment rate was 6.2 percent in August, down more than a percentage point from the year before, and a far cry from when he took office in 2009 with the economy in crisis. After a 2.1 percent contraction in GDP in the first quarter of this year, GDP rebounded at a 4.2 percent growth clip in the second quarter and the stock market has nearly tripled in five years.

Obama took credit for the improving economic picture by harking back to decisions he made early in his first term, when he led an effort to bail out the U.S. auto industry. He also said his signature health care law has made life better for American workers:

"America is stronger because of decisions we made to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation asking the simple question: is this good for ordinary Americans?"

It was, at least indirectly, a pep talk for Democrats facing tough races in a nation still gripped with economic anxieties.

The emphasis on the minimum wage is designed to draw campaign contrasts with Republicans, many of whom maintain that an increase would hurt small businesses and slow down hiring. No one expects Congress to act on it before the November elections.

Despite the absence of a federal increase, 13 states raised their minimum wages at the beginning of this year. Those states have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not raise the wage, providing a counterpoint to a Congressional Budget Office report earlier this year that projected that a higher minimum wage of $10.10 an hour could cost the nation 500,000 jobs.

Until now, Obama and his White House aides had been reluctant to draw too much attention to positive economic trends, worried that some may prove illusory or that, even if they hold, many working Americans continue to live on the edge of poverty and take no comfort in the upswing.

But White House officials believe it is time to highlight recent improvements, in part to strengthen a difficult political environment for Democrats and to counter public perceptions that are eroding the president's public approval. Officials say Obama's most compelling case is to compare the economy now to what he inherited in 2009 in the aftermath of a near Wall Street meltdown.

But in coming to Wisconsin, he brought his Labor Day message to the state that was the center of a fight over the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

In Wisconsin, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who pushed through a law that stripped most public sector union members of their ability to collectively bargain, is now in a tight re-election campaign and has been mentioned as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016. Polls find that Walker and Democrat Mary Burke are deadlocked with the election just over two months away.

The White House is encouraging Democrats to draw attention to the recovery as they head into the November mid-term elections.

In an August memo to House and Senate Democrats, Obama's top two economic advisers underscored the positive news: more than 200,000 jobs created per month for six consecutive months, a six-year high in auto sales, second-quarter economic growth that exceeded expectations and an expanding manufacturing sector.

Even so, there is still significant weakness in the labor market, underscored by the long-term unemployed. Labor participation has dropped. As well, real hourly wages fell from the first half of 2013 to the first half of 2014 for all income groups, except for a 2-cent increase for the lowest income level, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

In July, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose to its highest reading since October 2007, two months before the Great Recession began. But a new survey by Rutgers University found that Americans are more anxious about the economy now than they were right after the recession ended.

Wire services