CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A grim new snapshot of jobs in America shadowed the presidential campaign Friday, testing the patience of voters who will save or sink President Barack Obama’s re-election bid. Republican Mitt Romney said Obama’s convention party had given way to quite a “hangover.”
Employers added 96,000 jobs in August, not nearly enough to dent unemployment, let alone inspire confidence that the economy is getting better.
Even the good news — the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — resulted from many job hunters just giving up. The number of people working or looking for work shrank in August by 368,000, the government said.
The disappointing report leaves the president and his advisers with fading hopes that the economy will surge before Election Day — much as it did late last year — and allow them to amplify his case that the country is on the road to recovery.
“We’re going in the wrong direction,” Romney said.
Obama put the emphasis on a trend showing employers have added jobs for 30 months in a row. He did so with a nod to public frustration.
“We know it’s not good enough,” Obama said, dealing with the downbeat news mere hours after his Democratic National Convention. “We need to create more jobs, faster.”
The economy has added 139,000 jobs a month this year, a slower pace than last year. It takes roughly 200,000 jobs a month to shrink unemployment. In perspective, the economy was bleeding hundreds of thousands of jobs when Obama took office, but that does not comfort the jobless today.
The sluggish job growth could make the Federal Reserve more likely to unveil a new bond-buying program at its meeting next week. The goal would be to lower long-term interest rates to encourage borrowing and spending.
With 60 frenetic days left until the election, the economic report was not grim enough to alter the political narrative of a consistently tight race. Yet the attention it commanded eroded any hope of a post-convention boost for Obama.
Instead, it underlined his point that economic recovery will not be “quick or easy.” No president has won re-election with unemployment over 8 percent since Franklin Roosevelt. Obama has embraced that Great Depression comparison, hoping to show why he and the nation need more time.
Their conventions behind them and their debates ahead, Obama and Romney sprinted into the next phase of the campaign, targeting eight or so toss-up states. The two men headed the same way Friday, appearing in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states with small but potentially decisive electoral prizes.
The new employment report only sharpened the competing and defining storylines of the election. Romney says the poor pace of job growth demands that Obama be thrown out of office, while the incumbent implores voters to compare the candidates’ economic visions and see why only his would help the middle class.
If the jobs numbers did hang over Obama, he did not show it, smiling and waving during rallies in Portsmouth, N.H., and Iowa City, Iowa. In both cities, he returned to the themes of his convention speech, poking fun at Romney while shrinking his competitor’s economic theory to one idea.
“Tax cuts. Tax cuts. Cut some more regulations. Oh, and more tax cuts,” Obama told the thousands who packed the grounds at Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Museum. “Tax cuts when times are good. Tax cuts when times are bad. Tax cuts to help you lose a few extra pounds. Tax cuts to help you improve your love life. It’ll cure anything.”
Romney was biting as well.
On repeated occasions Friday, he challenged Obama’s competency, lumping together the jobs report and Obama’s prime-time convention address.
“There was nothing in the speech that gives confidence that the president knows what he’s doing when it comes to jobs,” Romney told Fox News.
It was a rejoinder to Thursday night, when Obama stood before a cheering crowd and essentially put the candidates on different levels.
“The times have changed, and so have I,” Obama said. “I’m no longer just a candidate; I’m the president.”
Trying to extend the buzz of his convention, Obama went back on the trail with Vice President Joe Biden and their wives as well. One of the longest days of his campaign would take him from North Carolina to New Hampshire to Iowa and ultimately Florida, where he begins a bus tour Saturday.
The monthly jobs snapshot came out even before organizers in Charlotte had finished clearing away the convention.
“If last night was the party,” Romney said in a statement, “this morning is the hangover.”
Romney’s campaign unveiled new TV ads in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. The themes of the ads are tailored to the economic concerns within those states.
The gloomy reaction to job growth came in part because it fell below the expectations that economists had for August.
On top of that, hourly pay fell in August, manufacturers cut the most jobs in two years and the number of people in the workforce dropped to its lowest level in 31 years. The government also said 41,000 fewer jobs were created in July and June than first estimated.
