After 43 straight months in the cold grip of an 8-plus percent unemployment rate, America finally broke loose — by a little.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the jobless tally dipped in September to 7.8 percent, its lowest level since January 2009. That was down from 8.1 percent in the month-earlier report.

President Barack Obama's camp hailed the news as compelling evidence of the commander-in-chief's ability to move the economy in the right direction. The economy is moving in the right direction, ever so slowly.

Challenger Mitt Romney pointed out that job creation remains weak. It is weak. Struggling employers managed to add just 114,000 jobs in September.

We've heard a lot about percentages during the presidential campaign — the 47 percent, the 1 percent. So it should come as no surprise that "7.8 percent" instantly became a political football. There were even suggestions that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was cooking the books. How else to explain a modest job increase coupled with a sudden, significant decline in the unemployment rate?

There's a plausible explanation. The monthly unemployment report combines two different surveys, one of households and one of employers. The unemployment rate is derived from the often-volatile household survey. The results unveiled Friday showed an unexpected surge of 873,000 people working, far outpacing a 418,000 increase in the size of the labor force — the number of people working or looking for work. When the number of jobs soars and the size of the labor force increases by a lesser amount, it pushes the unemployment rate down.

One surprise buried in the numbers was a 415,000 increase in the employment of 16- to 24-year-olds during September, according to an analysis by the independent Capital Economics research firm in London. That reversed a 427,000 decrease in employment among that same category of younger workers during August. It may indicate that more youngsters left their summer jobs earlier this year than the Labor Department's seasonal adjustments accounted for. That's more or less a quirk in the data. It's not a big deal. All it means is that the September figures caught up with a slight improvement in the labor market.

The volatility in the household numbers contrasts with the more stable, larger survey of employers, which is the basis for the job creation figure of 114,000. The more encouraging part of the report was an upward revision in the number of jobs created in July and August, which suggested that the jobs slump this past summer wasn't as deep as previous reports suggested. America's jobs engine is bumping along a little more steadily than economists might have thought. It's hardly robust, though.

This was a modestly positive report — period.

There is one more employment report — on Nov. 2 — before the Nov. 6 election. Yes, it will have an impact on one job based at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But for the sake of the millions of unemployed Americans, here's hoping that it shows what a real recovery looks like.