Spinning economic stats doesn't help unemployed

WASHINGTON — The good news is that unemployment has fallen to "only" 9.5 percent. The bad news is that the jobless rate is down only because so many people have given up hope of finding work. Perversely, the jobless who aren't actively looking for jobs are not counted as "unemployed."

Perhaps there should be a new category titled "mired in existential despair."

If anyone in Washington wants to know why people in the hinterlands are angry, one simple answer is that our political leaders seem to be so calculating and unmoved about the parlous state of the economy.

The disheartening employment figures released last Friday quickly became fodder for the kind of political to-and-fro that has become standard operating procedure. President Obama quickly put his spin on the numbers, noting that the private sector added 83,000 jobs in the month of June. The president's Republican opponents noted that overall, the economy lost 125,000 jobs — taking into account not just the private-sector gain but the end of 225,000 temporary jobs for census workers.

Last month, it was the other way around. The overall number, showing what happened in May, indicated a healthy-looking gain in jobs — so that was what Obama wanted to talk about. But the increase reflected mostly census hiring, with the private sector adding a paltry 33,000 jobs — which was the number the Republicans wanted to highlight.

All the spinning and counterspinning drives people crazy. And why shouldn't it? The employment numbers aren't just a monthly set of partisan talking points. They represent actual lives. They represent mortgages that might not be paid and college educations that have to be deferred; they tally mental health crises and broken marriages. Those sterile, emotionless figures speak of pain and anxiety. They mock our faith in the American dream.

Let me put it in terms that Washington understands: The party that begins to treat the unemployment crisis with the hair-on-fire urgency that it deserves is the party that will do well in November.

In the past, a steep fall into recession has often led to an equally steep climb back to prosperity. Clearly, that's not the case this time. In relatively short order, the economy lost about 7 million jobs. So far this year, we've gained back more than 600,000 — not bad, given that in early 2009, we were shedding that many jobs each month but not nearly enough to have the kind of impact the nation can really feel.