Election 2012's Big Question: Is The Jobs Picture Improving?

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

It's the quadrennial question that hangs over every presidential election. Four years ago, with a devastating financial crisis gripping America and the world, the answer was obviously, "no." This time around, the answer is more complicated. The official unemployment rate ahead of the election is 7.9 percent, which is 0.1 percentage point worse than the month Barack Obama took office in 2009.