Bam job-boost claim a lame shame

As head cheerleader of the stagnant and stumbling economy, President Obama has lost all the frills on his pompoms.

Exhausted, he stood before cameras yesterday and, in dreary cadences of despair, did his best to draw lipstick on the mouth of a sick pig.

Any way you try spinning it, the latest job numbers are disastrous for Democrats desperate to hold on to power in next month's elections.

Take the rosiest spin possible out of the White House.

"Today's employment report shows that private-sector payrolls increased by 64,000 in September, continuing nine consecutive months of private-sector job growth," Obama's chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, proclaimed.

The growth is "more evidence that the economy continues to recover," he said.

But that claim is hard to justify since Goolsbee himself notes that last month's private-sector job gains are a dramatic drop-off from the average monthly gain of 91,000 jobs added each month over the last quarter.

March and July saw over 100,000 private-sector jobs created, and April enjoyed over 200,000 jobs added.

If anything, September's 64,000 private-sector jobs suggests a steep decline in private-sector growth.

Of course, the reality is even bleaker with a total of 95,000 jobs lost last month after huge layoffs in public-sector jobs.

Administration officials downplayed that, saying 77,000 of those were temporary census jobs that we knew all along would eventually go away.

But that's not what they said earlier this year when they used the hiring of all the census workers as proof that the economy was rolling to recovery.

The massive losses in public-sector jobs comes after Democrats dove $26 billion deeper into debt over the summer to save jobs for teachers, firefighters, police and other government employees.

But Obama assured us that without all that added debt, public-sector job losses "would have been even worse."

We just don't know how lucky we are.

churt@nypost.com