The U.S. Economy Slips Below the 'Mendoza Line'

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

The U.S. jobs machine underperformed even the most pessimistic forecasts in May, adding just 69,000 jobs. The lowest estimate of 87 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 75,000, with a median of 150,000 and an optimistic top estimate of 195,000. The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April.

The worse-than-mediocre job growth is a big blow to the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama, who has been touting the economy’s gradual recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Even with the latest job gain, the economy has regained only 3.9 million of the 8.8 million jobs that were lost in the deep recession that ended in June 2009. May’s job growth was the smallest increase in a year.

Obama will not be running on his economic record: you can count on that.