UNIMPRESSED WITH THE NUMBERS: Jack Welch: “Obama Is Manipulating The Jobs Numbers Because His Debate Performance Was Awful.” The sudden change certainly was convenient.

UPDATE: “Pretty soon we will have only a few million people employed and ‘full employment’ in this country.”

The economy is creating so few jobs that millions are staying out of the labor market, thereby prevent the unemployment rate from soaring. In September we created a measly 114,000 jobs, but the rate declined to 7.8 percent.

Consider that if labor force participation had held even since January (when it was 8.3 percent), the jobless rate would be 8.4 percent. If the job participation rate were the same as when Barack Obama took office, the rate would be 10.7 percent. The broader U-6 rate (unemployed plus total employed part time for economic reasons) held steady at 14.7 percent. Obama can spin the numbers anyway he likes, but this is not an economic “recovery” in a meaningful sense. We are adding fewer jobs on average per month than we did last year (143,00 vs. 153,000).

When you can’t trust the numbers, it becomes harder still to have a meaningful recovery.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A Cynical President Has Earned A Cynical Doubt. “Yeah, sorry. But this has been a very cynical presidency, protected by a press that is cynical about everything but their adored one, and it’s made me cynical in response.”

MORE: James Pethokoukis: That Sickly, Stagnant September Jobs Report. “Is this the Obama October Surprise? Only in an era of depressingly diminished expectations could the September jobs report be called a good one. It really isn’t. Not at all.”

Plus, a reprise and update of that devastating graphic of what Obama promised vs. what he delivered.

And a look at the percentage of Americans who are employed, which still stinks: