The theme in Charlotte was that the, yep, the economy is abysmal—but isn’t President Obama awesome!
When the August jobs report came out this morning, Mitt Romney captured the disconnect:
If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover.
The Washington Post notes that, while the “unemployment rate technically fell” (but only a smidgen: 8.3 to 8.1 percent), the reason for this seeming improvement is simply that many people have given up looking for work.
From the Washington Post, here is what happened:
[T]he 368,000 people who dropped out of the workforce in August is the largest attrition since December 2010.
The economy, meanwhile, continues to create jobs at a slower pace than analysts say is required to effect a recovery, with 96,000 jobs created for the month.
That 96,000 figure is lower than the 141,000 jobs that were created in July and is the fourth time in five months that job growth has failed to crack six digits. (Analysts generally say the economy needs to create around 200,000 jobs per month in a recovery.)
This economy, despite whatever went before it, is the result of nearly four years of new regulation, uncertainty about taxes (or, more likely, the dire certainty that tax will be higher in a second Obama administration), and an atmosphere that is hostile to business.
Rea Hederman of the Heritage Foundation sums up the report on The Corner:
This report simply confirms that there is no real recovery in the labor market. Job gains are scarce and many potential workers are not even trying to find jobs. It is doubtful that robust labor-market gains are in the future given the massive tax increases slated for 2013; businesses already are adjusting their investment plans because of the fiscal cliff.
The August jobs report “tells the story of an exhausted and discouraged American workforce.”
But President Obama is awesome!