as an american I did not believe....,

NYTimes | “This economy is absolutely appalling,” said Mary Moore, 39, who has been applying for jobs as an administrative assistant in Norfolk, Va., since she lost her job at a publishing company in May 2009. Ms. Moore, who can collect unemployment benefits for a few more months, is struggling to pay her $525-a-month rent and health care insurance, which recently nearly tripled to $379 a month.

“As an American I did not believe we would see times such as this,” she said.

With the departure of thousands of temporary Census workers and thousands more let go by state and local governments, businesses could not rescue the American labor market in July.

Over all, the nation lost 131,000 jobs last month, according to the Department of Labor, which also said that June was far weaker than previously indicated.

Private employers added 71,000 jobs last month, but those figures were overtaken by the 143,000 cut as the Census wound down. It is also about half the number that economists say is needed to simply accommodate population growth, so the tepid job increases cannot begin to plug the hole created by the loss of more than eight million jobs during the recession. The unemployment rate, in fact, remained stuck at 9.5 percent in July.

“The private sector is still hobbled,” said Robert A. Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh, “and certainly is not nearly strong enough to overcome the drain on the government side.”

Government figures released last week confirmed that the American economy slowed in the spring, and the latest jobs numbers suggested that the weakness continued into the early summer. With economists and politicians fervently arguing over whether the economy is poised for liftoff or stalled on the runway, Friday’s jobs report did little to end the debate.

Some economists are talking about the risk of a “double dip” recession, and the political stakes for the Obama administration are rising as the midterm elections tick closer.