The nation's jobless loom over President Barack Obama's presidential campaign. At no point will that association be more evident than Friday when the government reveals the nation's most recent unemployment numbers just hours after Obama wraps up his convention pitch and sets off on a tour of critical swing states.

Mitt Romney promised Thursday that his economic program will create 12 million new jobs in the next four years, and likened President Barack Obama to a "dog trying to chase its tail" when it comes to strengthening the sluggish recovery.

Against an increasingly bitter campaign backdrop, President Barack Obama is seeking to shore up support for his re-election in Virginia, a state he won four years ago ending decades of domination by Republican presidential candidates.

Fighting a swell of economic anxiety, President Barack Obama has lost much of the narrow lead he held just a month ago over Mitt Romney and the two now are locked in a virtually even race for the White House, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

A growing chorus of once-confident Democrats now say President Barack Obama could lose the November election.

Mitt Romney out raised President Barack Obama in May, the first time the Republican presidential challenger has jumped ahead of Obama and his prodigious fundraising apparatus. The numbers illustrate how Romney and the Republican Party have jelled as a force after a protracted GOP primary.

The discouraging new unemployment numbers present President Barack Obama with a sobering reminder that an uneven recovery from the recession can be a fragile argument for his re-election. It's all deepening his anxiety over the political and economic threat posed by the European debt crisis.

President Barack Obama says the May jobs report shows that the economy is not creating jobs "as fast as we want" but vows that the economy will improve.