wow, that's quite a change! almost incredible, I'd say. 17% out of work. on average. averages can be misleading of course. for example, if it was 34% when Obama started (thanks, Dubya) and 0% when he finished, the average would be 17%, which sounds bad, but in that hypothetical scenario, Obama would have reduced the jobless rate by 34%. so if you could give a little more data for the last ten years, it would be easier to tell whether Obama was the problem, which ol' Trump claims, or Obama solved the problem, which is the story that the aggregate national data tells.