Analysis: Bleak news for Democrats in jobs report

WASHINGTON – The economic die is cast, and it's grim news for Democrats. There's nothing now that Congress or President Barack Obama can do to before the November elections to jolt the nation's listless recovery. Friday's unemployment report — the last major economic news before the midterms — showed the nation continued to lose jobs last month, reinforcing the bleak reality that it probably will be not months but years before the jobless rate returns to pre-recession levels below 6 percent. With nearly 15 million Americans still without work, that tightens the pressure on Democrats ahead of the Nov. 2 elections. And it also casts a dark shadow well into the 2012 election season and beyond. "We won't see under 6 percent for five years," David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, said Friday after the Labor Department reported that 95,000 more jobs were lost in September and the unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent. "It's going to be a slow recovery."