UE rate drops to 9.1%, still too few jobs created

A tweet by Ezra Klein about the latest numbers:

The fact that 85,000 jobs were expected doesn't make 117,000 good. We're below population growth. We are literally not recovering. (emphasis added)

And Boehner is now claiming that the poor unemployment numbers are proof that Washington is spending too much money, and that America is overtaxed and over-regulated.  It's time the President shot down this kind of dangerous talk from the Speaker.

“Today’s unemployment report is more proof that all of the Washington spending, taxing, and regulating is devastating our economy. While the American people are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ the Democrats running Washington are determined to punish small businesses with higher taxes and more red tape – including hundreds of new regulations last month alone – and to keep their spending binge going at all costs. Instead of more jobs, they’re creating more fear, more uncertainty, and more debt.
“To get our economy back to creating jobs, Republicans are working to expand American energy production to help lower gas prices, repeal the job-crushing health care law with all of its mandates and tax hikes, adopt a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop Washington from spending money it doesn’t have, and more. While the Senate and White House have resisted these efforts so far, I hope Democrats will take this opportunity to ‘pivot’ away from their failed ‘stimulus’ policies, and work with us to implement our Plan for America’s Job Creators and remove the government barriers that are hurting job growth.”

He doesn't mention, and the President refuses to say, that the stimulus worked - it created or saved millions of jobs. The problem is that it wasn't big enough. But for some reason the White House doesn't believe in strongly defending its record.

More here.

Hiring picked up slightly in the U.S. in July and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent, an optimistic sign after the worst day on Wall Street in nearly three years.

The Labor Department said Friday that employers added 117,000 jobs last month. That's an improvement from the past two months.

At least 125,000 jobs a month are needed to keep up with population growth. Twice as many [250,000] are generally associated with significant declines in the unemployment rate, which has risen for three straight months.