I know a drop in the unemployment rate should be good news–and maybe it even is–but what these numbers reflect is the pool of people looking for work has gotten shallower as more people get OUT of the pool.

From CNBC:

The actual employment level increased by 278,000. The total amount of those without a job fell to 13.3 million.
The drop in participation rate is significant in that had the labor force remained steady, the jobless rate would have dropped to 8.8 percent, according to Citigroup calculations. If the labor force had followed trend growth, unemployment would be at 8.9 percent.

The President could help himself by bringing down the unemployment rate. He could do that by allowing drilling. The WSJ puts the number of jobs killed in that business at 200,000. Imagine what having 200,000 real jobs would do for an economy.