Wisconsin Conservatives passes on this corrective for those who rejoice in 7.8 percent unemployment:

The latest BLS figures show that only 58.7 percent of Americans over the age of 16 are employed.  This marks the 37th straight month under Obama that fewer than 59.0 percent of Americans have been employed.  To put that into perspective, the lowest percentage of Americans who were employed during the Bush–Obama recession was 59.4 percent.  The lowest percentage of Americans who were [employed] during the 20 years before Obama took office was 61.0 percent.  In other words, the worst month in the two decades before Obama was 2.3 points better than where we’re at now.

Only in Obama’s world of lowered expectations could 58.7-percent employment be viewed as cause for celebration.

That 61-percent number includes the post-Operation Desert Storm and post-9/11 recessions, by the way. The unemployment rate now matches the unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009. Nearly four years,  more than $1 trillion of “stimulus” and nearly $6 trillion of debt later, this is the best we get? Not since the Great Depression has employment taken this long to recover during a “recovery.” (And that was because of World War II, which should meet no one’s definition of “recovery.”) If jobs are the last thing to recover from a recession, jobs are not going to recover during an Obama presidency, whether four or eight years.

The Business and Media Institute adds:

Economist Peter Morici of the University of Maryland noted in his commentary that “the unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent, because the number of self-employed jumped dramatically.” How much? He told Business and Media Institute he put the ballpark number at 700,000 newly self-employed. Morici also said that they couldn’t have all been full-time jobs and more likely were engaged in part-time work such as freelancing.

He said that labor participation had declined a great deal since Obama took office and caused most of the “reduction in unemployment from its 10.0 percent peak in October 2009.” He pointed out that if the participation rate had remained the same unemployment would be 9.8 percent; 10.7 percent if using the rate from beginning of Obama’s term.

Dean Baker, co-director of the lefty Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the result “almost certainly a statistical fluke.” “It is common to have large monthly changes in the employment numbers that are not consistent with other economic data,” he added.

The Street.com found other economic experts concerned about the increase in part-time work. “Daniel Alpert a managing partner of investment bank Westwood Capital noted the large benefit that part time workers gave to the unemployment rate. ‘Whoa, folks, stop the music,’ wrote Alpert, on Twitter. He noted a 582,000 increase in part time workers – a general negative – that pushed the unemployment rate lower. ‘The unemp. rate went down b/c of part time,’ wrote Alpert,” The Street reported.

Another number more accurately reflects the economy today. What the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the U6, or “labor underutilization” rate, remains at 14.7 percent. That includes not only the unemployed, but those who want to work full-time but are working part-time, and “discouraged” workers “who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months.”

The highest U6 rate during George W. Bush’s presidency was in December 2008, 13.5 percent. The lowest U6 rate during the Obama administration was in his first month in office, 14.2 percent.

The Obama economy doesn’t just affect the unemployed and underemployed, though. Sentier Research reported in late August that since June 2009, U.S. median annual household income dropped 4.8 percent, from $53,508 to $50,964.

The next point, from The Blaze, should be devastating:

It means household income has fallen more during the “recovery” (4.8 percent) than it did during the recession (2.6 percent). Just think about that.

There is simply no way that were the roles reversed, Democrats would not be crowing about the disastrous economy right now. I await Obama’s (or his sycophants’) explanation of why the unemployment rate’s drop is good news when it’s dropping because the number of workers is dropping. And I await anyone’s explanation for why, during a “recovery,” household income drops nearly twice as much as it did during the previous explanation.

A politically unaligned person might claim the economy may or may not improve with a change in the White House. It’s crystal clear from the past four years that the economy will not improve with another four years of Obama as president, and at least as importantly, the collection of those known as the “Obama administration.” Recall that Obama said in 2009, “If I can’t fix the economy in three years, you can call me former President Obama.”