WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The economy is improving and is doing well enough — just barely — for Barack Obama.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated Friday that the economy created 171,000 jobs in October while the unemployment rate rose by a tenth to 7.9%. Read our full coverage U.S. adds 171,000 jobs as hiring picks up.

The increase in the unemployment rate in October was the good kind of increase, because it was due to more people looking for work, not because of mass layoffs. In the past two months, nearly 1 million people have started looking for work. And over that period, nearly 1.3 million have found employment, including more than 1 million finding full-time jobs. See the BLS data for yourself.

In the past year, the economy has created 1.9 million jobs, according to a survey of businesses. We already know that the 1.9 million will be revised higher by about 400,000 to about 2.3 million. According to a separate survey of people, the economy has created 3.1 million jobs in the past year.

The unemployed are starting to believe that there is a job for them out there.

This was a good set of numbers, but not a great report. The unemployment rate is still very high. The number of people who’ve been out of work longer than six months ticked above 5 million again. Average weekly wages dipped slightly. The unemployment rate for African-Americans climbed by nearly 1 percentage point to 14.3%.

So, this was another one of those good-but-not-great economic reports that’s kept Obama the favorite for re-election..

In fact, it looks as if Obama will hit all his key numbers:

Unemployment under 8%? Check.

Gas prices under $4? Check.

Economic growth above 2%? Check.

Over 270 electoral votes? We’ll see on Tuesday.

—Rex Nutting