The Labor Department announced today that 125,000 jobs were lost in June, in part due to 225,000 temporary census jobs ending, leaving a gain in private sector employment of only 83,000 jobs. The unemployment rate lowered slightly from 9.7% to 9.5%, in part because 652,000 people stopped looking for work.

Reuters writes today, “Employment fell for the first this year in June as thousands of temporary census jobs ended and private hiring grew less than expected, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama who has identified job creation as a key priority.” Politico reports, “The U.S. economy created a modest 83,000 private sector jobs in June, adding to concern that the economic recovery is tepid at best . . . .”

Politico also points out, “The unemployment rate has remained near a politically perilous 10 percent in what increasingly looks like a largely jobless recovery, if it is a recovery at all. The economy is making very limited headway in replacing the nearly 8 million jobs lost since the recession began following the 2008 credit crisis and banking sector meltdown.”

Of course, this in just weeks after Vice President Joe Biden announced that the White House is calling this “Recovery Summer,” despite unemployment remaining high and anemic private sector job growth. And this is despite the $862 billion stimulus bill that Obama signed last year, which Democrats said would create 3-4 million jobs and prevent the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%.

Nor have the subsequent economic policies of the Obama administration been much help. In fact, The Washington Post reported last week, “The chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama’s closest ally in the business community, accused the president and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday of creating an ‘increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.’ Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and ‘harm our ability . . . to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.’” And even liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote Monday that Obama and Democrats “did not focus on jobs, jobs, jobs as their primary mission.” Instead, they have pursued unaffordable job-killing measures like the costly health care bill and wrong-headed proposals like a national energy tax.

It looks like the “Recovery Summer” has been delayed a bit.

Related:

Rasmussen Reports: 29% Say Stimulus Plan Helped the Economy, 43% Say It Hurt

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