The U.S. Labor Department reported Friday showed the economy added just 69,000 jobs in May and sent the jobless rate to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.
The unemployment rate for African-Americans, which had dropped a full point to 13 percent in April, increased to 13.6 percent.
The disappointing jobs report increased concerns about slowing global growth and the prospects of President Barack Obama’s chances for a second-term.
Obama will likely have a tough election battle.
Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression has a president won re-election with unemployment rate as high as it is today.
When Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush in 1992 the unemployment rate was 7.4 percent.
While President Obama can point out that he inherited the Great Recession, his chances for re-election are clouded if unemployment remains this high.
The president will have now to November to explain to American voters that the economy will continue to slowly recover under his economic policies and that Mitt Romney is proposing the failed Republican policies of the past of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of the financial sector that will reverse those economic gains.
The prospects for Obama and unemployed workers will improve once the economy begins to significantly add more jobs.
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