US President Barack Obama has responded to the financial crisis by providing a stimulus package. In particular, he decided to expand government spending, inject money to the economy, boost growth and accelerate recovery.

The results of this policy have been partly fruitful. As Obama explained last month in his State of the Union address for 2013, businesses have started to create jobs and the housing market is starting to heal.

The economic recipe of Obama in a time of crisis has led scholars and analysts to draw a parallel between his policy and the "New Deal" of the 1930s.

Faced with the Great Depression, then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt employed a model of intervention strategy and invested in a plethora of public works in order to kick off the economy and help poor and unemployed people.

When he came to office in 1933, unemployment in the country was over 24 percent. This rate fell to 14.18 percent four years later, and decreased to 14.45 percent in 1940.

Even if Roosevelt's critics argue that his policy failed to bring unemployment numbers to pre-"New Deal" rates, a different strategy might have been catastrophic in an environment of instability, poverty and uncertainty.

But Obama's program has not yet been as successful. The employment numbers themselves are not particularly worrying. When he entered the White House in January 2009, for instance, unemployment was 7.8 percent, while its rate now is close to this at 7.9 percent.

But as Obama himself is confessing, "too many people still cannot find full employment."

This observation itself suggests that the qualitative nature of existing or new jobs has to be taken into account and carefully examined before safe conclusions on the matter are reached.

In October 2012, one month before the US presidential election, unemployment fell below the symbolic level of 8 percent.

Nonetheless, approximately 580,000 Americans were working part-time. The main reasons were either slack business conditions or the lack of an alternative.

The increase in part-time employment can arguably constitute a success story for Obama, although it certainly contributes to the reduction of unemployment.

For his part, Roosevelt managed to empower workers and create a middle-class society that lasted for decades. This is why his New Deal policy yielded positive, if not revolutionary, results.

By contrast, the economic recipe of Obama has not yet made middle class in the country stronger. The persistent decline in its standard of living has not been reversed during his administration, posing a serious threat for social order and maybe, at a later stage, for US power.

It is unfair for Obama to evaluate his economic policy before he finishes his job in 2016. The particular efforts he made in his first four years in office under difficult economic and political circumstances, especially after losing control of the US Congress in November 2010, can create optimism that he will complement his work during his second term.

But it is also inappropriate to make comparisons with the New Deal as long as conditions for the US middle class continue to decline.

The author is a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn