By historic standards, they weren’t blow-out numbers. When the American economy is going at full throttle, it can generate 250,000 or 300,000 jobs a month. But for a President in a tight reëlection race, four days before the polls open, the October employment report must have come as a mighty relief. According to the Labor Department’s survey of businesses, 171,000 new jobs were added last month—the highest figure since February. The new positions were spread throughout the economy, with retailing (plus 36,000), health care (plus 31,000), and business services (plus 51,000) showing particular strength. The only big group of employers that shed workers were state and local governments (minus 13,000) which are still being hit by budget cuts. And revisions to the previous two months’ payroll reports added another 84,000 jobs to the economy’s over-all total.

In addition to the surge in job creation, there was a sizable increase in the work force, indicating that the out-of-work think more jobs are becoming available. Last month, more than half a million people started looking for work. Fortunately for Obama, this surge in job-seeking wasn’t quite big enough to push the unemployment rate back up to the politically important threshold of eight per cent: from 7.8 per cent in September, it edged up to 7.9 per cent in October. The small increase was largely because the monthly survey of households, from which the unemployment rate is derived, showed an even bigger jump in employment than the payroll survey: 410,000.

That’s a pretty impressive number. Contrary to some reports earlier in the week, the tabulation wasn’t affected by Hurricane Sandy: the Labor Department had completed its survey work before the storm hit. That was more good news for President Obama, who would have faced accusations of political interference if the report’s release had been put back until after the election. Robbed of this charge, Mitt Romney issued a statement saying the report was “a sad reminder that the economy is in a virtual standstill. The jobless rate is higher than it was when President Obama took office, and there are still twenty-three million Americans struggling for work.”

Romney’s figures are accurate enough, but they badly need parsing. On January 20, 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate stood at 7.8 per cent. By October 2009, the deep recession that Obama inherited had pushed the jobless rate up to ten per cent. Since then, the unemployment rate has been on slow but reasonably steady downward path. The twenty-three-million figure for people “struggling for work” includes 12.3 million people who are jobless, 8.3 million people who are working part-time for economic reasons, and 2.4 million folks who want work but have stopped actively looking for it. These numbers represent a lot of human suffering and an enormous waste of resources: the G.O.P. candidate is right about that. But things are steadily improving. To say the economy is at a standstill is to fly in the face of reality.

Over the past year, the total number of people employed has risen from 140.3 million to 143.4 million, according to the household survey. After allowing for population growth, the number of people unemployed has fallen by a million, and the number working part-time or no longer actively looking for work has dropped by about half a million. The number of people who have been out of work for more than six months—the hard-core unemployed—has fallen by more than eight hundred thousand, and it now stands at five million.

At the White House, there was a determined effort not to gloat over the new figures. Alan Krueger, the Princeton prof who serves as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, merely noted in a blog post, “Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.” With an eye on Tuesday, Krueger added, “It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class.”

Actually, the employment report suggested that even people with work are still seeing little or no improvements in their standards of living. Last month, average hourly earnings for all employees in the non-farm sector fell by a cent, to $23.58. Over the past twelve months, they have risen by 1.6 per cent, which is less than the rate of inflation. Stagnant wages are a problem that long predated Obama’s Presidency, and it will most most likely post-date it, too—whether or not he wins on Tuesday. (Aware of this problem, Krueger reminded people that President Obama has proposed extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class.)

All told, then, it was a positive jobs report—for the President and the country. As always, the statistical note of caution applies. With a margin of error of plus or minus a hundred thousand on the payroll figures, and plus or minus 0.2 per cent on the unemployment rate, it is silly to make to make a big distinction between, say, a job figure of 171,000 or 100,000, or an unemployment rate of 7.9 per cent or 8.1 per cent. But looking over the longer term, which evens out some of the statistical noise, the U.S. economy continues to create jobs: 157,000 per month, on average, in 2012, which is practically unchanged from 153,000, in 2011.

As I said up top, that’s not spellbinding. But it’s considerably better than most of the other advanced economies have managed in recent years, and it belies suggestions that the Administration’s economic policies have been a failure. Between January, 2009, and February, 2010, during Obama’s first thirteen months in office, the non-farm economy lost about 4.4 million jobs according to the payroll survey. (As usual, these figures are slightly different than the ones in the household survey.) Today, all of those jobs have been recovered, and then some. In January, 2009, 133.6 million people were employed; last month, the figure was 133.8 million. For the first time, Obama can now say that more Americans are working than when he took office. Doubtless, it’s a point he’ll be making over the next few days.