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President Obama didn’t get what he needed in yesterday’s employment report.
After what was widely perceived as a poor and listless performance in Thursday’s debate against Republican challenger Mitt Romney, what the president needed was a home-run jobs report — one that knocked any doubts about the economy out of the park.
What he got instead from the Labor Department was a double — a report that is somewhat satisfying, unless you wanted to trot around the bases in an “I told you so” kind of way.
That the economy created just 114,000 jobs in September is disappointing on many levels. It’s fewer than the 140,000 jobs Wall Street was expecting and fewer than the 150,000 new jobs needed just to keep up with population growth.
It’s also disappointing because the average rate of job growth in 2012 is lower than it was in 2011. That means the US economic engine is slowing, and the blame rests squarely with the president.
But don’t expect the White House to focus on the anemic job growth. It instantly jumped on the shocking drop in the unemployment rate — from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent — which Labor gets from a second survey.
The jobs-created survey is taken of companies — the unemployment rate from a household survey.
So where does this all leave the president? As of yesterday’s report, the unemployment rate is back to where it was when he took office.
But the broader underemployment rate — which includes those who can only find part-time work — is still 14.7 percent.
And when you include people who have completely given up looking for work and therefore aren’t counted, the number of underemployed and unemployed is 22.5 percent.
That creates a dilemma for the president. How hard can he cheer the September drop in the unemployment rate when he — or, at least his advisers — knows that it could be a statistical fluke.
The unemployment rate dropped because more part-time jobs were added — not exactly a reason to celebrate.
Americans, after all, are pretty good at calculating their own unemployment rate among friends, family and folks they used to work with who have been laid off.
And what about the number of jobs created during the Obama administration?
As of September, the number of new jobs stands at just under 2 million during Obama’s four years.
But the country is still 6 million shy of the peak number of jobs that existed back in 2007.
The president will have a difficult time getting people to vote for him simply because he restored 25 percent of the jobs that were lost.
I predicted more than a year ago that President Obama will not be re-elected and that the economy would be the issue.
It’s hard to win a debate, much less an election, when your opponent can throw a dismal economy in your face.