Senate Conservatives Fund — Unemployment jumps to 9.7%

Here are the August employment numbers from the new jobs report out just this morning. It's not pretty.

Non-farm payroll dropped in August by 216,000 jobs.

The number of unemployed persons jumped to 14.9 million, which is the highest level in American history.

The unemployment rate is now 9.7%, which is highest level since August 1983 (26 years).

Since the beginning of the year, we've lost 3.1 million jobs and the unemployment rate has increased by 2.5 percentage points.

Since President Obama was elected in November 2008, we've lost 5.3 million jobs and the unemployment rate has increased by 3.1 percentage points.

While these numbers speak for themselves, the Vice President wants us to believe that a negative number is actually a positive number. He said this yesterday:

Two hundred days ago, President Obama signed into law the third piece of our economic plan: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. And today there's a growing consensus: The Recovery Act is, in fact, working. Don't just take my word for it. Analysts from Moody's to IHS Global Insight, to the Economic Policy Institute and others all estimate the Recovery Act has created or saved between 500,000 to 750,000 jobs. As a matter of fact, some notable economists suggest the number is as high as a million.

Instead of acknowledging that we've lost at least 3 million jobs on the President's watch, the Administration wants Americans to believe that we've gained 1 million jobs.

The strategy of pure deception has begun. Expect it to shift into high gear on Wednesday when the President speak to the Joint Session of Congress on health care.