What’s the economy’s role in the election?

>> back to the numbers that came out this morning. as we said, it's the jobs report both campaigns will use to try to back up their arguments for and against the economic policies of the last four years. mark zandi is the chief economist for moody's analytics. i know you've already called it a great report. why is it a great report? why do you put it in that category?

>> well, maybe i should have said very good. because great i should probably reserve for the really great report. 170,000 jobs, that's good. very good. we got unemployment ticking up a notch after a big decline last month. and household employment. this is another survey, another estimate of employment. rose again after a big gain last month. that generally leads employment conditions. when you add it all up it feels really good. the other thing i point out is that the job gains are increasingly broad based across a lot of industries particularly construction and this is very important because as the housing market kicks in over the next year or two that's where we're going to get a lot of these jobs. anything construction related.

>> before i ask the next question i want to inform viewers. mitt romney just put out his statement on the unemployment report. here is what he said. today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill. the jobless rate is higher than it was when president obama took office. there are still 23 million americans struggling to work. on tuesday america will make a choice between stagnation and prosperity for four years. president obama 's policies have crushed america's middle class for four years. president obama has told us that things are getting better and that we're making progress. obviously, he believes it is at a stand still . you look at the last two years. is this economy recovering? how do you describe the recovery after the last say two years?

>> it is recovering. you know, if you look through the monthly volatility in the data we're getting about 150,000 jobs per month. so that's okay. in fact, in an economy that was with an unemployment rate of 6% we'd be pretty comfortable with that. but as has been pointed out we have a 7.9% unemployment rate . we need more job growth , stronger job growth to bring the unemployment down closer to that 6% level. so it's good. it's okay. i'll take it. but we need better.

>> i guess what -- how do we get the better? i mean, you know, the fact is as i just pointed out this is still a little bit above population, keeping up with population so this would be great if we were at full employment but we're not. so what is the missing ingredient here?

>> here is the good and the bad news, chuck. there's one missing ingredient and that is for the next president and the next congress to nail down some of the fiscal issues, scaling back the cliff, the debt ceiling, laying out a path to fiscal sustainability. the deficit reduction we need in the long run is to stablize the nation's debt load. what we need to do is very clear. that is the good news. the bad news is we have to execute on that. that will be difficult. that's why i think over the next three to six months as we work through these issues the numbers could be softer than we are experiencing now. businesses are going to be very concerned and worried about what is going to happen.

>> i want to talk quickly about sandy. you made your estimate i think as the one being quoted the most about $50 billion. what about the impact on the national economy ?

>> you know, it's going to affect the monthly data so vehicle sales were soft. we already saw that because of the effects of the last few days of october. but by the end of the year certainly by spring this will all iron out. i don't think bottom line sandy is going to have a big impact on the national economy . it's not a game changer at any time.

>> all right. mark zandi of moody's analytics the man we always turn to on these fridays. we're going to keep following these reports. thank you very much.

>> thank you.