The finer nuances of that 7.9% unemployment rate....

[YoungDemCA]

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t10.htm


If you notice, the unemployment rate for full-time workers has remained essentially unchanged from September at 8.3%. It's the unemployment rate for part-time workers that has gone up (from 5.8% to 6.2%) from September to October.

Why is this?

The labor force increased by 578,000 workers in October. The number of employed persons, as measured by the household survey from which these data come, increased by 410,000. Since the increase in new jobholders was less than the increase in the labor force, the number of unemployed increased by a reported 170,000. (The numbers don’t sum because of rounding errors.) The unemployment rate is the ratio of employed persons to the labor force.

The BLS also publishes a broader measure of unemployment known as U-6. It includes discouraged workers who have given up looking because they think there are no jobs to be found, people who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work if available, and some other marginally attached workers. The number of involuntary part-time workers fell by 296,000 in October, helping to bring U-6 down from 14.7 percent to 14.6 percent.

Looking at other data from the household survey, we find that the employment-population ratio increased from 58.7 to 58.8 percent. That marks its highest level in more than three years. The labor force participation rate increased as well, from 63.6 percent to 63.8 percent. Both of these data points are further signs of a strengthening labor market.

In other words, this is actually good news for Obama.