U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up. The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering.

The Labor Department also says the economy created far fewer jobs in the previous two months than first thought. It revised those figures down to show 49,000 fewer jobs created.

The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April, the first increase in 11 months.

The economy is averaging just 73,000 jobs per month over the past two months -- roughly a third of jobs created per month in the first quarter.

Weak job growth could damage President Barack Obama's reelection prospects. Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, has made the economy the central theme of his campaign.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/01/jobless-rate-friday-morn...

6.1.2012
WASHINGTON – The weak May unemployment report presents President Barack Obama with a sobering reminder that his stewardship of a gradual recovery from the deepest recession since the Great Depression presents a tenuous argument for his re-election.

Anemic job growth and an uptick in joblessness to 8.2 percent also give new resonance to Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney's campaign and puts Obama on the defensive after a winter when the jobs trends were in his favor.

The jobs numbers, issued every four weeks from a spare, windowless room in the heart of the federal bureaucracy, are setting the battle lines for the presidential election.

As this year's dominant economic barometer, they are a baseline from which to gauge Obama's and Romney's political fortunes in an election that rides on the pace of a post-recession recovery.

Romney, responding to the first jobs numbers released since he clinched the GOP presidential nomination, called the figures "devastating news."

"It seems like we've been moving backward. We can do so much better in America," Romney said in a statement.

Shortly after the numbers were released, Obama headed for Minnesota to push his proposal to expand job opportunities for veterans and to raise money for his campaign. In the meantime, the world anxiously awaits the impact of the European debt crisis, which could stall the recovery in the U.S.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/01/jobless-rate-now-leading-polit...