The Sluggish Economy: The September jobs report shows a net increase of only 114,000 jobs – a number far below even the anemic jobs numbers of the past two years and well below what is needed to keep up with population growth. Thus, one would expect the unemployment rate to go up slightly or stay at 8.1 percent. However, somehow the Obama Labor Department claims those pathetic numbers lowered the jobless rate to 7.8. Sounds like magic math. Other polling services who track unemployment say the rate of unemployment went up slightly in September, not down. Who are you going to believe? Obama’s Labor Department? Or your own eyes?