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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jobs report exceeds dismal expectations

Unemployment doesn’t budge with weak growth

Christopher S. Rugaber Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The jobs crisis isn’t getting worse. But it isn’t getting much better, either.

The economy added just enough jobs last month to ease fears of a new recession. But hiring is still too weak to bring down unemployment, which has been stuck at about 9 percent for more than two years.

The nation added 103,000 jobs in September, an improvement from the month before, the Labor Department said Friday. But the total includes 45,000 Verizon workers who were rehired after going on strike and were counted as job gains.

Even counting those workers, the job gains weren’t enough to get the economy going. It takes about 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. For September, the unemployment rate stayed stuck at 9.1 percent.

“Well, the sky is not falling just yet,” Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, said in a note to clients. But there was nothing great about the report, he added. “It’s incredible how low our sights have been set.”

On one hand, the unemployment report was encouraging for economists. Some of them had feared the nation would lose jobs in September, raising the risk of a painful second recession.

But everyday Americans can’t take much solace from it, either. The Great Recession has been over for almost two and a half years, and while corporate profits and the stock market have bounced back in that time, unemployment is still high.

The Labor Department said the economy added more jobs than first estimated in July and August. The government’s first reading had said the economy added zero jobs in August.

While the report was clearly better than feared, it also showed the economy is not gaining much momentum, said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets.

“It moves you away from the ledge,” he said.

It was also discouraging news for President Barack Obama, who will almost certainly have to wage his 2012 campaign during the highest unemployment of any president running for re-election since World War II.