With the release of the depressing new unemployment numbers this morning, Democrats nationwide have a reason to be gloomy.
This is the last time the last national unemployment rate will be released before the November election.
And what is the factoid that highlights the Associated Press account of the numbers?
The unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The jobless rate has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months, the longest stretch since the 1930s.
The report is the final one before the November elections, which means members of Congress will face voters next month with an economy that is still struggling to create jobs.
And didn’t the Democrats say the stimulus was working? Not so much.
The private sector added 64,000 positions, the weakest showing since June.
It’s widely understood that the economy needs to add about 100,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. This isn’t gonna cut it.
And that’s not the worst of it:
There was further bad news in the expansion of underemployed and chronically unemployed. The underemployed grew by 612,000 in September, and is now at 9.5 million people. The chronically unemployed went to 2.5 million, up 300,000 from a year ago. Among the latter group were 1.2 million discouraged workers, up over 500,000 from a year ago.
Just remember what Joe Biden said back in April:
Vice President Biden predicted Friday at a Pennsylvania fundraiser that the U.S. economy would be adding up to 500,000 jobs each month “some time in the next couple of months.”
Anyone else seen that kind of growth since June? Yeah. Me neither.