The Orange County Register

The Labor Department released Tuesday its latest monthly report on job openings and labor turnover, which is know by the acronym JOLTS.

It informs us that there were 4.7 million job openings across the country at the end of July. But what it doesn’t tell us is that there were 9.7 million job seekers in July — more than twice as many looking for jobs as there were available jobs.

That’s why we are not ready, as yet, to join President Barack Obama in declaring victory over joblessness. For, while the U.S. labor market has most certainly improved since the Great Recession ended midway through Obama’s first term, it is nowhere near full employment.

Indeed, in August, the nation’s unemployment rate declined a tick, to 6.1 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday in its monthly “employment situation summary.” That jobless rate is tied with June’s as the lowest of the Obama presidency.

But there is less to that seemingly encouraging figure than meets the gimlet-eyed. Because it had nothing to do with idle workers find jobs and almost everything to do with nearly 3 million Americans dropping out of the workforce.

In fact, the nation’s labor participation rate fell to 62.8 percent in August, the lowest level since Jimmy Carter haplessly sat in the Oval Office. And while some attribute the decline to the growing ranks of the retirement-aged, the fact is that most of the 3 million workforce dropouts are of prime working age, 25-54 years old.

If the White House is concerned about these disquieting trends within the nation’s labor market, it isn’t letting on. Instead, it is congratulating itself that Obama has presided over “the longest streak of job growth in history” — 10 million private-sector jobs over 54 straight months.

“This figure is a marker of the progress that has been made,” stated Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. It is a sign of the “strength” of the Obama economy, wrote White House staff blogger Tanya Somanader.

Well, we see it differently. To us, the figure is a reminder that the nation’s employers need to add another 20 million jobs — on top of the 10 million the White House celebrates — to employ all those looking for full-time permanent work.

That’s why the 142,000 jobs created in August was such a disappointment. While it put a bow on the record 54th straight month of job growth, it also was the smallest monthly increase in 2014.

In fact, a headline in the New York Times suggested the August jobs report was so disquieting, it actually is “raising fear of malaise,” which we thought banished when Carter was turned out of the White House in 1981 by Ronald Reagan.

We remain wishful that the final two-plus years of the Obama presidency will produce more robust job growth than the previous nearly six and that the 20 million or so who’ve been left behind by the Obama recovery will find gainful employment.