Romney Slams Obama's New Unemployment Numbers

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney moved to undercut the latest U.S. jobs report showing unemployment at its lowest rate since President Barack Obama assumed office, saying the true number is much worse.

Romney’s comments to more than 6,000 people in Apopka, Florida, came the day after new Labor Department data showed an unexpected drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent in September, the lowest since Obama took office in January 2009.

“If we calculated, by the way, our unemployment rate in a way that was consistent with the way it was calculated when he came into office, it would be a different number,” Romney said tonight. “You see, if the number of people — if the percentage of the American population who were in the workforce were the same today as the day he was elected, our unemployment rate would be above 11 percent. This is inexcusable.”

Romney appeared to be referring to the workforce- participation rate, which was 63.6 percent last month, compared with 65.7 percent in January 2009. That figure isn’t incorporated into the monthly unemployment number released by the government, and wasn’t before Obama took office.

The penultimate jobs report before the Nov. 6 election took on outsized significance in the presidential race, in which Obama’s economic record and Romney’s claim to have the business experience to do better at creating jobs are central themes.

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