Jobs: It's not as bad as it could've been. That, as the Labor Day weekend began, was the cold comfort that many in the media took from the still-dismal August jobs report. Can't we expect something a little better?

True enough, 68,000 new private-sector jobs were created last month, showing that private businesses, though gasping for breath, aren't dead yet.

But overall, 54,000 jobs disappeared, raising the toll during the "Recovery Summer" Vice President Joe Biden ridiculously hailed two months ago to 238,000. Nor was the uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.6% from 9.5% what you expect in a "recovery."

This is not "better than expected"; it's worse than expected. This can be gauged not by market expectations for modest job creation, but by long-term experience watching how jobs are created in a normal recovery. By that gauge, we're in the worst jobs slump since World War II.

Even the normally bland Surveys of Consumers, put out by Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan, warned Friday that "the probability of a double dip (recession) is high enough for everyone to include such an event in their contingency plans."

Job data can be misleading. Gallup's biweekly measure of "underemployment" — the share of workers who are either unemployed or working part-time but want to work full-time — stood at 18.6% in late August, the highest level since June.

"Worse yet," said Gallup, "(our) job data show that 28% of Americans 18 to 29, 24% of those with no college education, and 22% of women, were underemployed in August."

For those who have no job but want one, it may be a long wait.

In 2009, President Obama vowed to create 3.5 million jobs, lifting the total by the end of this year to 137.8 million. The actual number as of August was 130.3 million — leaving, as Heritage Foundation economist J.D. Foster puts it, a "jobs deficit" of 7.5 million.

Put differently, at August's pace of private-sector job creation — 68,000 a month — it would take more than nine years for Obama to reach his goal. And that assumes that there's no growth in the work force at all.

If it wasn't clear to everyone by now, it should be: All the actions this government has taken — the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion "stimulus," the health care takeover, financial reform — haven't "saved or created" 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they've destroyed millions of jobs — and with them, the hopes and dreams of those who've lost the jobs.

But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another "stimulus" costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or completely incompetent.

On Friday, the president actually patted himself on the back, saying the employment report was "positive news" that "reflects the steps we've already taken to break the back of this recession."

If there's one thing that marks this administration as different from others, it's the steadfast refusal to remove its ideological blinders and learn from its mistakes.

As we note above, there are other ways to create jobs, and they have the added advantage of actually working.