And it’s not good for Bush. What he’ll tout as the Greatest Thing Since Buttered Bread will be the unemployment rate, which held stead at 5.4% for the second straight month. While that’s far from stellar (Clinton had a 3.9% rate in the late 90’s), it is better than almost any other time in Bush’s term. However, it does not really mean that fewer people are unemployed, it just means that fewer people are counted as unemployed, which is why the rate is deceptive. It leaves out people who have been unemployed longer than their benefits run and are not currently reported as seeking a job. Which means that millions of unemployed Americans are not even on that list.

But the big news is the number of jobs gained: 96,000, well below expectations, well below the 150,000 jobs needed each month just to tread water, to provide for population growth. In other words, there’s a net loss of about fifty thousand jobs there. “Anemic” would be about right as far as describing it. This number plays up the fallacy of believing everything is OK because of the illusory unemployment numbers. And while July’s numbers were adjusted upwards by a small 12,000 (August was revised down by a tiny 1,600), it is nowhere close to the upward revisions the Bush people were claiming would be seen.

It will be Kerry’s challenge to make sure that he can best Bush at establishing which number is more indicative of the present economy. A few numbers that will help him do this is that in September, 18,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, while government bureaucracies swelled by 37,000 workers–Bush’s version of “smaller government,” apparently.