Jobs Report: More Of The Same Blah

salon.com — After all the drama and exquisite execution of the Democratic National Convention, President Obama’s campaign managers were probably feeling pretty good about themselves. Then came the government’s non-farm labor report for August. The economy added only 96,000 jobs, below expectations, and substantially undercutting the positive economic data that trickled out on the just one day earlier. The unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent to 8.1, but for bad reasons — both the size of the overall labor force and the labor participation rate fell, signs that in August hundreds of thousands of Americans simply gave up on the hope that there were jobs out there to be found. The labor participation rate currently stands at 63.5 percent, its lowest mark since 1981. Which means we’re back where we’ve been most of the summer — and really, for most of Obama’s term — grappling with a disappointing, underperforming labor market.

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