Last Official Jobs Report Before Election: Good News

"Persistent Economic Growth," says the NYT headline. This is good news for working Americans, indeed, for everyone except Republican office-seekers. Here's Catherine Rampell of the Times:

The nation’s employers added 171,000 positions on net in October, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and more jobs than initially estimated in August and September. Hiring was broad-based, with just nearly every industry except state government adding jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 7.9 percent in October, from 7.8 percent in September, but for a good reason: more workers joined the labor force and so officially counted as unemployed.

No doubt the ranting Right is howling its conspiracy theories about the BLS, but they can't do much about it now.

This is still not enough, and as Rampell points out, there's that fictional "fiscal cliff" to overcome in Congress to avert a Tea Party government shutdown. One is tempted to resort to Alice's solution (see recent post), but hey, at least one side has to act as if it's really a democracy, and if they are elected, we have to live with that.

A job! I think I remember what those are like...