The nation’s unemployment rate fell slightly last month, but largely because so many people dropped out of the hunt for work, ceasing to be considered unemployed by the government. The official unemployment rate fell from 9.5 to 9.4 percent, but economists project the real unemployment rate to be 16.3 percent. On Friday, President Obama spoke to reporters after the release of the jobs figures.

President Obama: “This morning, we received additional signs that the worst may be behind us. Though we lost 247,000 jobs in July, that was nearly 200,000 fewer jobs lost than in June, and far fewer than the nearly 700,000 jobs a month that we were losing at the beginning of the year. Today we’re pointed in the right direction. We’re losing jobs at less than half the rate we were when I took office. We’ve pulled the financial system back from the brink, and a rising market is restoring value to those 401(k)s that are the foundation of a secure retirement.”