Photo by Glyn Lowe Photos.

The U.S. Labor Department reported this morning that the country added 171,000 jobs in October, though unemployment ticked up one-tenth of a percentage point, to 7.9 percent. And while that slight increase might seem like bad news, consider this: 578,000 joined the labor force in October, and 410,000 of them found jobs.

The latest release of statistics by the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes just four days before the presidential election following a campaign in which the health of the labor market has been a central issue.

Still, the number of long-term unemployed went up by 158,000, and governments slashed some 13,000 jobs—6,000 were from the U.S. Postal Service, 7,000 from state governments. The private sector added 184,000 jobs, with 17,000 coming from construction. And in more good news for the economy, the BLS’s reports for August and September were revised upward. Forecasters increased August’s estimate from 142,000 to 192,000 jobs created, while September jumped from 114,000 to 148,000.

The New York Times puts some of this in perspective:

There have now been 25 straight months of jobs gains in the United States, but the increases have been barely large enough to absorb people entering the work force. A queue of about 12 million unemployed people remain waiting for work, about two out of five of whom have been out of a job for more than six months.

That is in addition to more than eight million people who are working part-time but really want full-time jobs.

Will this matter to the presidential election, a mere four days away? As expected, each side will pretend so: President Obama can say that this proves that the economy is recovering, while Republican challenger Mitt Romney will posit that it only means that the recovery is barely keeping pace with the number of people looking for jobs.

One thing that did not affect the jobs report: Hurricane Sandy. In his statement accompany the statistics’ release John M. Galvin, the acting commissioner of the BLS, said the storm had “no discernable effect on the employment and unemployment data for October.”