From the announcement of several jobs bills that President Obama  is expected to address tomorrow to campaign shakeups, most recently the departure of Michele Bachmann's top campaign chief, this week has been full of political surprises.
On the eve of his jobs speech, searches on Yahoo! for "Obama approval rating" are up 102% in the past 30 days.  Additionally, it looks like Americans are trying to better understand what tomorrow's speech might entail.  Searches this week on Yahoo! for "Obama speech" are up 66%. Also spiking on Yahoo! this week are searches for "Obama birth certificate," "Obama bus tour," and "Obama speech."
According to Yahoo!, job searches this month include:

• Searches for "unemployment compensation" in the past 30 days on Yahoo are up 467%.
• Yahoo! searches for "secret shopper jobs" is spiking 865%, searches for "housekeeping jobs" is up 202%, and searches for "data entry jobs" is up 134% ??in the past 30 days.
• "Oregon state jobs" searches this month on Yahoo! are up 815% and searches for "City of Houston employment" are up 188% in the past 30 days.
• Yahoo! searches for "employment opportunities" this month are spiking 183%.
• Also spiking this month: "unemployment claims," "unemployment rate by state," "examples of resumes."

Will she or won't she? And here we are again, another week and another non-announcement from tea party candidate, Sarah Palin. After Palin's much-anticipated speeches over Labor Day weekend in Iowa, searches on Yahoo! for "Sarah Palin" are spiking 383% this week and it seems that America's favorite GOP leading lady has us right where she wants us—Sarah Palin is leading the entire field and has received more searches on Yahoo! in the past 30 days than any other 2012 Presidential hopeful.
Michele Bachmann, another famous GOP candidate, is spiking 42% on Yahoo! this week and people are searching for "Michele Bachmann's husband" (up 101% this month).  Even though Palin is getting more than double the searches of Bachmann in the past 30 days on Yahoo!, Bachmann is the overall top searched 2012 presidential hopeful.
According to Yahoo!, top political searches in the past 30 days are:

• Sarah Palin
• President Obama
• Michelle Bachmann
• Rush Limbaugh
• Ann Coulter
• Ron Paul
• Mitt Romney
• Joe Biden
• John McCain
• Michelle Obama

What is Yahoo! Search Data?
People power: We sift through billions of Yahoo! searches to uncover trends, burning questions, popular personalities and hot ideas. Yahoo! has been extremely successful in sifting through searches for trend-spotting, historical insight, forecasting projections, and big-picture analysis.
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