Spinning Those Jobs Numbers

The unemployment rate has fallen below 8 percent for the first time in four years to 7.8 percent. Here’s how the campaigns will react: The Obama campaign will say, “It’s fallen below 8 percent for the first time in four years! We’ve been working hard to get here.” The Romney campaign will say, “Gosh, that is hardly an accomplishment — look how long it took for unemployment to drop below 8 percent. We would have done things to get us there sooner!” The thing to remember is that the jobs numbers released today will be readjusted in a few months as the numbers file in and get analyzed. The Obama campaign will be happy to hear that the original August jobs report of 96,000 jobs added to the economy has been revised to 142,000 jobs added. The U6 number, which is also important to pay attention to, has remained relatively unchanged, but has been trending down according to this chart by Ezra Klein (more here).

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