Due to the government slowdown, the Labor Department didn’t publish the September jobs report until Tuesday morning. As usual, the news is mixed at best. Employers added an unimpressive 148,000 jobs in September, which isn’t even enough to keep up with population growth. August was atypically revised upward and July downward for a net gain of just 9,000 more jobs.

Headline unemployment edged down to 7.2% from 7.3% last month and is at its lowest point since November 2008. As has been the case for the last couple of years, however, the rate decline is due in large part to more people leaving the workforce than finding work. More than 11 million people want a job and can’t find one, and millions more are stuck in part-time work when full-time jobs are needed. According to Bloomberg, “Through August, the U.S. had recovered 6.8 million of the 8.7 million jobs lost as a result of the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009.” All told, a record 90 million Americans aren’t working – 10 million more than when Obama took office.

As Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., put it, “It’s not like we’re falling off a cliff, but there’s a failure to get any spark in employment.” Indeed, the Obama “recovery” has been anything but, and it pales in comparison with previous recoveries under presidents of both parties. Government spending and regulations, as well as taxes for every taxpayer, have grown tremendously in the last five years, and that’s taking its toll.