Sign "O" the Times

Dang, I did not see those downward revisions coming.

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) October 2, 2015

Whatever life had finally been breathed into the jobs market by years and years of free money seems to have died:

U.S. hiring slowed sharply in September, and job gains for July and August were lower than previously thought, a sour note for a labor market that had been steadily improving.

The Labor Department said Friday that employers added just 142,000 jobs in September, depressed by job cuts by manufacturers and oil drillers. The unemployment rate remained 5.1 percent, but only because more Americans stopped looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

All told, the proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one fell to a 38-year low.

It’s easy to joke about the downward revisions — lord knows I’ve made more than my share — but try and keep one thing in mind. Every single one of those imaginary jobs represents a fellow American who couldn’t find work, but whose imaginary employment was abused to show how well Obamanomics is “working.”

And each drop in the participation rate (can you remember even one month that it’s gone up since the recovery began?) represents thousands of your fellow Americans who have simply given up, possibly never to find, or even hope to find work again.

That’s the truth about Obama’s recovery.