The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Jobless Rate Dips to Lowest Level for Last Two Years,” provides some welcome relief for President Obama and conversely hurts one of the main rationales for the Romney campaign.

The drop to 8.6 percent is not good news in itself but suggests that the economy is moving in the right direction at least. The new rate is the best for the economy in 33 months, and it comes accompanied with several other good signs as well. These include an increase in temporary hiring, retail sales and auto sales. And the statistics for the previous two months were revised upward as well.

There is still a major backlog of unemployed people, and part of the reason for the good statistic involves a drop in the number of people looking for work — only 64 percent of the people are involved in the labor market.

Still, it comes as welcome news for the President and deflates one of the main rationales for the Romney campaign — his supposed skill and knowledge of the economy. Whether this trend can be sustained may decide the result of the 2012 election.

Meanwhile, the Congress is tying itself in knots trying to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut and perhaps renew the extension of unemployment benefits as well. President Obama is suggesting they stay in session over Christmas if they can’t get it done. That’s not going to sit so well with Republican obstructionists.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Median Incomes Shrunk Further After Recession,” gives some indication of the suffering of the American people even after the so-called recovery from the recession began.

The recession and financial crisis extended from December 2007 to June 2009, after which the American people were assured that economic growth was on their side.

However, new reports show that median income continued to decline through June 2011, the latest measure of this statistic. Household income fell 6.7 percent to $49,000, while during the recession, it only fell 3.2 percent.

Of course, if you’re the one who’s unemployed, all these numbers are insignificant. You’re 100 percent out of work.

And people who do lose their job can expect a long and trying hunt for a new one. Average time of unemployment has climbed from 16.6 weeks in December 2007, to 24.1 weeks in June 2009, to 40.5 weeks in September, the worst in 60 years.

The people in the Occupy Wall Street protest put a human face on these numbers. The movement is based on fairness and outrage. As the inequality among our citizens grow, and our college graduates struggle to survive, we need to listen and respond to their desperate attempt to communicate the current realities in our society.

Median income is a statistic, but the decline of our society is all too real.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Modest Growth in Jobs Tempers Recession Fears,” provides the latest economic statistics from September’s monthly report. Jobs increased by about 100,000, just enough to cover new people entering the work force and keep the overall unemployment rate the same at 9.1 percent.

The results can be viewed as a glass half empty or half full. Auto sales increased by about 10 percent, but the manufacturing sector, responsible for much of our recent growth, lost jobs this month. In addition, about a third of the overall private job growth could be attributed to the return of 45,000 Verizon employees who had been out on strike.

Healthcare, professional and business services all grew last month, but the public sector continued to bleed jobs, with teachers being especially hard hit. Perhaps most important, there was no sign of alleviation for the 14 million unemployed Americans. The average length of unemployment, at 40-plus weeks, also continues to be unacceptable.

The President is caught between a rock and a hard place. If the statistics were worse, he could use them to push for his jobs bill. If the statistics were better, he could them to counter accusations from Republican presidential candidates about his poor stewardship of the economy. In between doesn’t help matters much.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Deep Recession Sharply Altered U.S. Jobless Map,” provides some sobering news for the once-booming “bible belt,” accustomed to attracting people from other areas of the country due to its growing economy. It appears that the South has suffered disproportionately to the rest of the country and is slower to recover as well.

Apparently, areas used to rapid influxes of population and the concurrent prosperity from the construction and housing industry have been hurt the most when the housing bubble burst. For example, South Carolina now has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the entire country. Other temperate states such as Nevada, Arizona and California have been significantly hurt as well.

The areas relying on healthcare, education or energy production have been less hurt by the recession and even the “Rust Belt” is starting to recover due to a renaissance in the auto industry. The long-term effects of the uneven state economies remains to be seen, but in the end, people will move to where the jobs are, and if they are no longer in the South, that will affect the population booms that have been supporting those economies as well.

Of course, no place is doing particularly well. Of 100 metropolitan areas, only 16 have recovered more than half of the jobs lost during the recession.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur,” describes some of the pluses and minuses of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, most importantly, the need for the economy to demonstrate sustained growth before hiring resumes in earnest.

It is consumer demand and increased business that drives hiring, and the President’s tax credit for hiring an unemployed worker will only help companies at the margin. On the other hand, the payroll tax cut, the main component of the plan, could generate increased spending, thus leading to that demand in the first place.

The President’s plan also allotted $35 billion to save teachers jobs as well as those of other public workers such as police and firemen, $30 billion to repair decrepit schools and $50 billion for infrastructure projects. These expenditures will directly save or create jobs but are unlikely to make it through the Republican-controlled Congress.

One major concern of analysts involves the six million workers who have been unemployed for six months or more. This is becoming a permanent underclass in our society and may represent structural unemployment that will be very difficult to reverse. Training programs would be desperately needed to help these people as the workplace continues to be transformed on an almost monthly basis due to the IT revolution and globalization.

The lead story in today’s New York Times, “Obama Challenges Congress to ‘Pass This Jobs Bill,’” showcased a President who was determined to reason with his opponents and provide a moderate proposal to help the economy. The speech, before a joint session of Congress, seemed to illustrate the very partisanship the President was railing against, with Democrats and Republicans applauding separately depending on the issue being discussed.

The President’s proposal, called the American Jobs Act, is a $447 billion program of tax cuts and infrastructure spending, no surprise there. But the speech was delivered in a forceful tone and could represent an inflection point for the Obama presidency. It was to be followed by the President touring around the nation, promoting his new legislation.

The centerpiece of the proposal is a renewed and expanded payroll tax cut, this time for both employees and employers, and this section has the best chance for passage. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, was surprisingly conciliatory after the address, noting that there were some areas where the two parties could work together. How that works in practice remains to be seen as several House committees would have jurisdiction over separate sections of the bill, and any one could help to tear it to shreds.

With 14 months to go before the next election, the hopes for major progress remain slim.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Zero Job Growth Latest Bleak Sign for U.S. Economy,” paints a stark picture of the current unemployment situation in the United States. The retail and manufacturing sectors, both which have been leading the slow recovery, ground to a halt, and even indicators for the future such as hours worked per week showed no increase.

The statistical impasse comes as a point when Democrats and Republicans are in partisan gridlock, and the brinksmanship over the debt ceiling led to Standard & Poors downgrading the United States credit rating, albeit from AAA to AA.

Meanwhile, with the President’s nationwide address now scheduled for early Thursday evening, timed to avoid a conflict with NFL football, and changed after the Republicans refused to extend him an invitation for Wednesday to avoid a conflict with their Presidential debate, the stakes have become even higher. One wonders if it even matters what he proposes since it seems inevitable that the Republicans will oppose it anyway. Indeed, even prior Republican legislative proposals have gone down in flames when President Obama has recycled them.

Clearly, a jobless rate of 9.1 percent is unacceptable, and action is required. But one wonders whether the players in our system, Democrats, Republicans and the Federal Reserve, have the guts and leadership to accomplish it.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Feeble Job Numbers Show Recovery Starting to Stall,” delivers devastating news for the Obama administration and could significantly imperil his reelection. The unemployment rate for June ticked upward to 9.2 percent, defying economists’ predictions, with leading indicators signaling problems for future months as well.

These indicators such as temporary hiring and average hourly work week generally rise before employers hire new staff — they try to supplement labor hours per these two methods first. Both actually declined in June.

Of course, Republicans were quick to tout the numbers as a sign of failure by the Obama administration, but one wonders how much any government could do with an economy as large and unwieldly as the United States, one led by its own internal dynamics.

It’s not totally clear to me, but it seems like everyone says that the main engine driving the economy is consumer demand, and as long as so many people are unemployed, that engine will remain stalled. Thus, our real economic problem is not deficit and the debt, or the status of “job creators,” as many Republicans claim. We need a jobs bill and economic stimulus to get us going again, the opposite of what the Republicans are touting.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “Sharp Slowdown in Hiring Clouds Economic Outlook,” describes a continuing anemic recovery as the nation only added 54,000 jobs last month compared to more than 200,000 in the previous three. State and local governments as well as the manufacturing sector, that has been leading the recovery, all reported net losses.

In addition, two leading indicators, the amount of temporary help and the length of the workweek, showed no increase. These statistics are important because employers typically increase them prior to hiring new full-time employees.

Probably the worst statistic for the President’s reelection chances, the unemployment rate, also ticked up to 9.1 percent from 9 percent. This is the most widely reported barometer of economic health, but it is unreliable because it is dependent on the amount of people seeking work, and when the economy starts to improve, more people do so.

Republicans, of course, were quick to score points from the report and characterized the stimulus package as a failure when many economists think it wasn’t big enough. Meanwhile, liberal Democrats called for more spending and additional actions by the Federal Reserve.

It’s hard to deal constructively with these policy issues when all sides just use them as an excuse to push their pet programs.

The lead article in today’s New York Times, “U.S. Posts a Gain of 216,000 Jobs, a Lift for Obama,” provides welcome good news after the crises in Japan and Libya. The increase represents the 12th consecutive month of job growth since the recovery began, totaling 1.8 million new jobs in all.

The President rightly used the statistic against Congressional Republicans who are threatening deep cuts in the budget at a time when all respectable economists say we need stimulus. The cutbacks could stifle or even reverse the recovery should they become law.

Still, even with the positive statistic, there are some reasons for continued worry. The black unemployment rate is 15.5 percent, and the Latino is 11.3 percent. These were 8.3 and 5.6 percent respectively before the financial crisis.

And at the rate we’re going, 200,000 new jobs a month, it will be 2019 before we recover to pre-financial crisis levels. We really need 300,000 per month for a vigorous comeback.

And we should also be concerned about the long-term unemployment picture, those who have been without work for 27 weeks or more remains extremely high at more than six million people. Also, it’s becoming increasingly common for job ads to say that the person must already be employed to be considered. Government lawyers are looking into the propriety of that, but a decision remains to be reached.