"Terrible" is a good word to describe the jobs numbers for May.
At 9.1 percent, the unemployment rate remains nearly unchanged from April. The number of long-term unemployed people increased by 361,000, to 6.2 million, and their share of the total unemployed increased to 45.1 percent from 43.4 percent. In total, the economy created 54,000 jobs, but given that we need 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth, you can think of it as America losing 96,000 jobs last month.
The political implications are a bit easier to forecast than the economic ones. If these numbers are any indication, the economy will stay weak for the near future, and further drag on President Obama's approval ratings. Moreover, while there isn't a direct statistical correlation between unemployment and the outcome of presidential elections, you can still safely say weak growth compromises Obama's re-election chances.
In a reasonable world, the unemployment numbers would push lawmakers to consider additional stimulus measures; as Paul Krugman recently noted, with its excess capacity and low aggregate demand, the economy would more than welcome a program of public works and infrastructure building in the vein of FDR's Works Progress Administration. This would require buy-in from both sides of the aisle, though, and unfortunately the rabid anti-government GOP has gone all in on the opposite approach: large spending cuts to discretionary spending, and larger cuts to entitlement spending. Odds are good that as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, the government will cut benefits and safety-net spending, unemployment insurance, food stamps, housing assistance, etc., at the same time these services are needed most in the economy.
If the 2009 stimulus were the contemporary equivalent of the New Deal -- a series of programs meant to revive a post-crisis economy -- then 2011 is 1937, when Roosevelt was forced to balance his budget and the economy suffered for it.
