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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Sluggish U.S. jobs stats new bad news for Obama

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 07/7/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

X5k (CP)

WASHINGTON -- The American job machine has jammed. Again.

The economy added only 80,000 jobs in June, the government said Friday, erasing any doubt that the United States is in a summer slump for the third year in a row.

"Let's just agree: This number stinks," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at the investment firm BTIG.

It was the third consecutive month of weak job growth. From April through June, the economy produced an average of just 75,000 jobs a month, the weakest quarter since July through September 2010.

The unemployment rate stayed at 8.2 per cent -- a recession-level figure, even though the Great Recession has technically been over for three years.

The numbers could hurt U.S. President Barack Obama's odds for re-election. Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee, said they showed that Obama, in 31/2 years on the job, had not "gotten America working again."

"And the president is going to have to stand up and take responsibility for it," Romney said in Wolfeboro, N.H. "This kick in the gut has got to end."

Obama, on a two-day bus tour through the contested states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, focused on private companies, which added 84,000 jobs in June, and took a longer view of the economic recovery.

"Businesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months, including 500,000 new manufacturing jobs," the president said. "That's a step in the right direction."

The Labor Department's report on job creation and unemployment is the most closely watched monthly indicator of the U.S. economy. There are four reports remaining before election day, including one on the Friday before Americans vote.

No president since the Second World War has faced re-election with unemployment over eight per cent. It was 7.8 per cent when Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Ronald Reagan faced 7.2 per cent unemployment in 1984 and trounced Walter Mondale.

Patrick Sims, director of research at the consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies, said that "time has run out" for unemployment to fall below eight per cent by election day.

That would require an average of 219,000 jobs a month from July through October -- more like the economy's performance from January through March, when it averaged 226,000 per month.

Few economic analysts expect anything close to that.

"The labour market is treading water," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She called it an "ongoing, severe crisis for the American workforce."

The Labor Department report put investors in a sour mood.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 124 points. Industrial and materials companies, which depend on economic growth, were among the stocks that fell the most. The price of oil fell $2.77 per barrel to $84.45.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 7, 2012 B11

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