Unemployment drops below 8 percent

What happened

The U.S. economic recovery is showing signs of picking up speed, after the jobless rate fell unexpectedly in September, and this summer’s hiring numbers were revised upward. September’s unemployment rate of 7.8 percent was the lowest level since President Obama took office, giving his faltering re-election campaign a boost. The rate fell from 8.1 percent in August, as an estimated 114,000 people found jobs. The Labor Department also said that 86,000 more jobs had been created in July and August than previously estimated. Obama welcomed the dip in unemployment. “It is a reminder the country has come too far to turn back now,” he said.

The surprise drop in unemployment led some Republicans to question September’s jobs report, with former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch accusing the government of massaging the numbers to benefit Obama as the election nears. “These Chicago guys will do anything,” tweeted Welch. “Can’t debate so change numbers.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics said its data was collected by hundreds of career employees who’d held their jobs through several administrations, and scoffed at the idea of partisan manipulation. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said the job creation rate was still too low. “This is not what a real recovery looks like,” he said.

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What the editorials said

Obama has “reason to crow,” said The Washington Post. The jobless rate has fallen from a high of 10 percent in October 2009 to below 8 percent. “This is not small progress,” especially given the “epochal financial crisis” we experienced in 2008. Obama’s financial sector rescue, his bailout of GM and Chrysler, and yes, his $814 billion stimulus package helped blunt the impact of the meltdown and get people back to work. “Happy days are not here again,” said The Wall Street Journal. “Three years into this weakest of economic recoveries,” more than 12 million Americans are officially still out of work—40 percent of them for six months or more—and the economy is over 4.5 million jobs “short of where it was in 2007.” Bottom line: “The job market still stinks.”

The “bigger, knottier picture” here, said the Philadelphia Daily News, is that our economy has major structural problems. Most of the new jobs are low-wage, in retail or hospitality, while start-ups, “the real engine of job growth,” aren’t emerging quickly enough, or hiring enough workers. In “today’s highly technological and cloud-based world,” we need bold, innovative thinking for a 21st-century economy. Unfortunately, our presidential candidates’ stale ideas—more training, tax cuts, and trade agreements—“don’t match up with our new problems.”

What the columnists said

Clearly, “we’ve hit that point in the election when people begin to lose their minds,” said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. The idea that the White House could somehow manipulate the jobs numbers is laughable. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is “set up to ensure the White House has no ability to influence it,” with a nonpartisan staff of government bureaucrats, and no political appointees. Even if it could be done, said Deborah Solomon in Bloomberg.com, “would Obama have waited until now—five weeks before the election—to monkey with the numbers?”

The numbers may not be fudged, said James Sherk in NationalReview.com, but they’re very misleading. A drop from 8.3 percent unemployment in July to 7.8 percent today would require “stronger job creation than any time since the height of the Reagan economic boom.” Other economic indicators, such as new claims for unemployment insurance, point to continued slow growth.

Look—these short-term jobs statistics are unreliable estimates anyway, said Joe Nocera in The New York Times. So it’s “truly absurd” for the presidential race to “hinge on the unemployment rate,” especially since “no president has much control over the economy.” Even so, there’s some “rough justice” to how this is playing out politically. Republicans have blamed Obama for the high unemployment rate for months on end—but can “only stand by helplessly” as it dips below 8 percent. “The economy is slowly getting better. Awful, isn’t it?”