The end of July and two things continue in the U.S. – the unseasonably hot dry weather and dismal employment reports.

Thousands more discouraged, desperate people simply gave up looking for work and are no longer included in the unemployment rate calculation or it would have risen even higher than the small uptick to 8.3% at the end of July.

Governor Romney calls the rising unemployment number another hammer blow to America and President Obama for the most part ignores the report and touts the 163,000 jobs created in July and the 4.5 million jobs created since January 2009.

President Obama proclaimed the obvious when he noted “we've still got too many folks out there who are looking for work," in a White House statement and Governor Romney projected empathy in commenting, “These numbers are not just statistics." "These are real people, really suffering, having hard times." 

(Further commentary on the jobs report

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/03/13105512-obama-says-more-to-be-done-on-jobs-as-romney-decries-suffering?lite)

Let’s take a look at those 4.5 million jobs created over the past 43 months or approximately 104,650 new jobs per month.

An average of 104,650 jobs created per month during the Obama administration’s first term barely meets the requirements of normal population growth increases in the work force

Pres Obama and his campaign talk only about the number of jobs created, that it could be worse and that we are moving in the right direction.  Many unemployed Americans disagree because there is more to unemployment than new jobs created.

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/08/03/102513

Thanks to Glenn Foden - August 03, 2012 Townhall Cartoons

The election in November may very well turn on the unemployment number and how people feel about the economic recovery achieved by November and the prospects for the immediate future.  It is not a comforting to an unemployed worker to know that x number of jobs were created, that we are headed in the right direction, that there is much work to be done, that it could be worse or that good times are just around the corner.

A person who is unemployed, is struggling to pay the bills, is in danger of losing his/her home is going to have no trouble determining that their life is worse than it was four years ago.

The election in November may well turn on unemployment and other economy related issues and in those areas “the state of the union” is not good and prospects for near term improvement are not good.