Obama Camp Seeks Salvation in Jobs Numbers

Grasp for that straw

After a brutal week, President Barack Obama desperately needed a piece of good news.

He got a big one on Friday with the drop in the unemployment rate below the politically deadly level of 8 percent.

Republicans seized on the fact that the decline was based in large measure on part-time workers who may vanish from the labor rolls in subsequent months. And they noted that manufacturing employment actually declined by 16,000 and that employers said they added a total of just 114,000 jobs for the month of September.