Any way you slice or dice it, the April jobs report was terrible—and terribly disappointing. Employers added just 115000 workers to their payrolls last month, way below the 180000 Wall Street economists were expecting.
Oil fell $4.05, or 4 percent, to $98.49, after a weak US jobs report offered the latest evidence that the global economy is weakening, possibly reducing demand for oil. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that world oil supplies are growing.
Consider this: No sitting president facing an unemployment rate more than 8% has won another term since Franklin D. Roosevelt. So the headline from the Labor Department report Friday morning that the nation's unemployment level edged down from 8.2% in
"We should be seeing numbers in the 500000 jobs created per month," Mr. Romney said.
Overall, the Friday jobs report added to concern that the economic recovery may be slowing. The figures on job creation come a week after the Commerce Department reported that during the first three months of 2012, economic growth had slowed to an