After a lackluster debate, President Obama faced the prospect of a second piece of bad political news with Friday morning's jobs report. Instead, Mr. Obama â€" and the economy â€" received some unexpected good news.
Economists will spend the rest of the day parsing the numbers and arguing over exactly the best way to describe the report, but there is little question about its overall thrust: positive.
The unemployment rate dropped sharply, to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, because the Labor Department's survey of households showed a large gain in the number of employed people in September. The survey of businesses showed a smaller gain, but the survey also showed that hiring gains in July and August were larger than expected.
In a note to clients, Jim O'Sullivan, the chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, a research firm, called it “a much stronger report than expected.â€
At this poi nt in the presidential race, any single unemployment report is unlikely to have a major effect on the campaign. Friday's report does not change the basic storyline about the economy: it remains weak, and it continues to grow at a modest pace. The recovery from the financial crisis continues, but it will take a long time before the economy feels healthy.
For Mr. Obama, however, a fundamental change in the contours of the race is not the goal. Polls have consistently shown him with a small lead. The worry among his campaign advisers is that Mitt Romney's strong performance in Wednesday's debate and Mr. Obama's weak one have the potential to be a watershed.
That concern no doubt remains, but it would have been all the stronger if the jobs report had been weaker.
