US politics live blog: US unemployment figures, Herman Cain accusations

 

Former president Bill Clinton and President Obama at an event in Washington DC to publicise a $4bn energy efficiency fund. Photograph: Pool/Getty

Good morning: a rare spot of good economic news for the Obama administration is the highlight of the day, while Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain struggles with the latest allegations in a series of duelling television interviews.

Coinciding with the fall in the US unemployment rate to 8.6% – the lowest rate since early 2009 – President Obama appears with former president Bill Clinton to showcase a $4bn plan to upgrade buildings for energy efficiency, in an effort to improve the administration's green credentials and give a boost to the construction sector.

In Congress, a fight continues over extending the payroll tax cut, as Republicans and Democrats voted down their respective plans in the Senate – with a significant number of Senate Republicans crossing the floor to vote down their own proposal.

11.30am: Bill Clinton is speaking now to introduce President Obama and explaining his role in promoting the $4bn energy efficiency conversion plan – the event is taking place in a renovated office block next to Farragut Park in downtown DC.

Clinton is his usual fluent self talking about the benefits of the proposal. "It's the nearest thing we've got to a free lunch in a tough economy," says the former president.

President Obama and Bill Clinton tour an energy-efficient office building renovation in Washington Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

11.44am: President Obama is up now, touting the package that has just been announced and taking the opportunity to push the latest jobs figure showing a 100,000 increase in private sector employment:

This morning, we learned that our economy added another 140,000 private sector jobs in November. The unemployment rate went down and despite some strong headwinds this year, the American economy has now created in the private sector, jobs for the past 21 months in a row. That's nearly three million new jobs in all and more than half a million over the last four months. So we need to keep that growth going. Right now that means Congress needs to extend the payroll tax cut for working Americans for another year.

Congress needs to renew unemployment insurance for Americans who are still out there pounding the pavement, looking for work. Failure to take either of these steps would be a significant blow to our economy. It will take money out of the pockets of Americans who are most likely to spend it and it would harm small businesses that depend on the spending. It would be a bad idea. I think its worth noting, but the way, I notice that some folks on the other side have been quoting President Clinton about, "it's a bad idea to raise taxes during tough economic times", that's precisely why I've sought to extend the payroll tax this year and next year.

Obama changes tack and moves on to the legislation before Congress, which saw a battle over the payroll tax holiday take place last night. Obama wants Congress to pass the tax holiday, saying: "Now's not the time to slam on the brakes, it's time to step on the gas."

Then Obama threatens: "Otherwise Congress may not be leaving, and we can all spend Christmas here together."

That's not a prospect that anyone will be enthusiastic about.

12.04pm: More on the unemployment figures, which President Obama just now burnished as the 21st consecutive month of job growth, creating nearly three million jobs. The US economy added 120,000 jobs in November, the US Dep[artment of Labor said today, meaning the economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs for five months in a row – the first time that has happened since the good times of April 2006. On top of all that, revisions added a further 72,000 jobs to previous months' growth.

But the underlying picture is less bright. The unemployment rate shrank to 8.6% but that was because there were 315,000 fewer people active in the labour market.

Economist Dean Baker of the CEPR explains that fewer opportunities for women were behind the fall in the labour market participation rate:

The drop in participation was entirely among women and especially black women. (Among married women, employment rose by 194,000, so this was not a case of women as second earners dropping out of the labor force.) Participation numbers among white women fell by 199,000, a decline of 0.2 percentage points. The drop among black women was 164,000, a drop of 1.2 percentage points. These monthly numbers are highly erratic, and it is likely that at least part of this drop will be reversed in future months. Nonetheless there had been a trend of declining participation rates among both white and black women even prior to the November plunge. This suggests that there is a real issue of women losing access to jobs; although the December figures may show some reversal.

12.27pm: Speaking of keeping Congress back for Christmas, the next showdown over spending looms in the next two weeks when the last emergency funding bill runs out and the possibility of a government shotdown is back on the agenda.

The White House's budget director, Jacob Lew, has been telling journalists that Republicans are holding up the $900bn omnibus funding bill by insisting on tacking on legislation on abortion and the environment, as well as showing discomfort at the previous budget deal agreed in August.

12.40pm: Andy Kroll of Mother Jones magazine has sat down with a calculator and figured out that President Obama has averaged a fundraiser every five days so far this year, in preparation for "what's shaping up to be one of the most bruising, cash-drenched campaigns in history":

Obama is not on the money trail because he enjoys hotel ballrooms and posing for pictures with 1-percenters. The president's ramped-up fundraising efforts reflect the changing landscape of money in American politics, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Clinton and Bush II didn't have to worry about candidate-specific super-PACs and Karl Rove's shadowy Crossroads GPS outfit raising tens of millions of dollars to finance negative ads. And with the collapse of the presidential public financing system, which capped a candidate's spending, it's up to the candidates to rustle up as much private money as they can in the campaign arms race.

There's a very interesting comparison with the previous Clinton and Bush administrations: in the similar pre-election period, while Obama has held 69 fundraisers, Bush held 41 in 2003 and Clinton just 23 in 1995.