Jobless Numbers Don't Lie!

Jobless numbers don't lie

Frank QuaratielloFri, Boston Herald

Photo by APOUT OF WORK: The U.S. Labor Department will report the latest unemployment figures today. Job seekers, above, wait in line at a construction job fair in New York last month.
The party's over - and now Democrats are waking up with a hangover.

The Labor Department reported this morning that the U.S. unemployment rate dipped to 8.1 percent in August, but no amount of Bill Clinton's arithmetic can hide the fact that since President Obama took office in January 2009, he has barely been able to move that number - except up.

The nation's jobless rate in February 2009 - Obama's first full month in office - was 8.3 percent. That's exactly where it was in July 2012.

This morning's report shows only 96,000 jobs were added nationwide in August - bad news for President Obama. This means the unemployment rate dipped only because many job seekers gave up looking for work - not the way the president wants that number to go down.

Both the president and GOP rival Mitt Romney are in the Granite State today, and the new jobless rate will be the morning headline. So here's a primer on today's numbers game.

The president probably won't mention the rate itself today - 8.1 percent unemployment is nothing to brag about. Instead, he'll tell folks in Portsmouth: "We need to create more jobs faster. We're moving in the right direction, but we've still got a long way to go."

Eight percent unemployment is higher than any president wants, so the numbers we're more likely to hear from the president are 4.5 million private-sector jobs created in four years, including 1.1 million in the bailed-out auto industry. We won't hear $16 trillion national debt, but Obama may mention New Hampshire's 5.4 percent unemployment mark.

Mitt Romney is going to be talking a lot about the unemployment rate and the national debt over the next two months. If he's going to have any chance, he'll mention them at least once a day, starting today in Nashua.

"An 8 percent or higher unemployment rate after four years is unacceptable. It's time to fire the coach," Romney will say.

The Democrats are doing a great job defining Romney. Despite his overflowing campaign coffers, today Romney seems headed down the same road as other recent Bay State also-rans for the Oval Office.

The unemployment rate may offer Romney his best chance.

Under Obama, joblessness has never been below 8 percent, and it peaked at 10 percent in October 2009.

According to Presidents Clinton and Obama, that's George W. Bush's fault.

But it's worth noting that in eight years, the jobless rate under Bush was never higher than 6.3 percent in June 2003 - until the financial meltdown of late 2008. And even then, it never rose above 8 percent on his watch.

President Obama can say what he wants about Bush, but he'd kill to have that kind of unemployment rate two months before the election.

Frank Quaratiello is the Herald's business editor.