Looks like Bush is flip-flopping on whether results matter: Job growth ground nearly to a halt last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, in a new sign that the economy has weakened in recent months. Employers added just 32,000 jobs in July, a small fraction of what forecasters had expected and the smallest gain this year. The government also announced that job growth in May and June was less than initially estimated...The unemployment rate fell slightly, to 5.5 percent, last month, but it is based on a smaller survey than the job growth numbers, which are widely considered the more reliable gauge of employment. Stocks fell broadly after the report was issued, with the Standard & Poor's 500 index and the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 1 percent in early afternoon trading in New York. The dollar dropped against the euro, and interest rates declined, too, although many economists continue to expect the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark short-term rate next week. The new report creates a nettlesome political situation for President Bush, who had pointed to the strong job gains earlier this year as a result of the tax cuts he had championed. The weak job growth of the last two months means that he is now highly likely to stand for re-election with an employment level lower than when he took office, the first time that has happened in 72 years, when Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 amid Depression-era job losses far greater than any experienced in recent times...N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that the White House was "not satisfied with today's payroll employment number." But he added that the fall in the jobless rate and a recent decline in claims for unemployment insurance suggested that the job market could be healthier than Friday's report made it seem.