July's Job Report - Dismal

While the Obama campaign continues to rant about Mitt Romney's tax returns, the main issue on most American's minds, the dismal economy, continues to become more of a concern as it worsens under President Obama's stewardship.

The 'unemployment rate' rose to 8.3 per cent. The scare quotes are there because that's the fake U-3 figure politicians pick when they want to put a positive spin on things, based on new unemployment insurance claims.

The U-6 figure is the more accurate one that includes people who've stopped looking for work, people not covered by unemployment ( like the self-employed who've shut their doors) people in the labor force seeking their first jobs and calculates underemployment. And it doesn't allow any creative figuring that's figured prominently in the Obama Administration, like artificially lowering the number of people in the labor force to make the percentage lower.

The current U-6 real unemployment rate? 15.0 percent, as of this July.

The Administration may be attempting to put a spin on this by touting 163,000 jobs added, but because 150,000 people simply dropped out of the labor force, there was actually a decline. In June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 142,415,000 people employed in the United States. In July, that dropped to 142,220,000. That adds up to a real decline of 195,000 jobs.

These are the real numbers, and they aren't pretty.

I'll give the president more credit than he was willing to give America's small businessmen. He and his absurd and reckless policies definitely built this.

If this trend continues - and there's no realistic chance it won't barring something crazy happening - Mitt Romney's path to winning the election becomes a lot simpler.

Any reasonably competent and experienced manager ought to be able to cut spending and increase productivity by 10 per cent in both categories, and Mitt Romney has already demonstrated he has a winning track record in that area.

All he needs to do is keep reminding the American people of that fact and let them know that this 'new normal' the Obama Administration keeps touting (shades of Jimmy Carter's 'malaise' !) isn't something they need to tacitly accept.

If the August Jobs report,which comes out directly after the Democrat's convention in September isn't substantially better, President Obama is going to be branded with an impression of being lousy on the economy, something most Americans already believe anyway.

That's not a good thing for an incumbent seeking re-election to be branded with.

And all the blather about Bain and tax returns, all the beating of the racial and class warfare drums is likely not going to be able to turn that around, all things being equal.