BANGOR – Jobs and politics met head-on Friday with the release of August employment numbers and a campaign stop from former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who dismissed the recent addition of 144,000 jobs nationally as anemic and further evidence of the need for a change in the White House.

“There’s always a lot of spinning and tweaking of these numbers, particularly by the administration,” Reich told a crowd of about 50 people at Bagel Central during an event for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. “I want to give it to you straight. It’s another month we’ve actually fallen behind.”

Reich, a regular contributor to the National Public Radio program “Marketplace,” repeated the commonly held economic theory that the economy must create 150,000 jobs a month to keep up with increases in the working-age population.

The country has lost 1.6 million private-sector jobs since Bush took office, Reich said. Gains in the public sector, however, bring the total job loss down to 913,000.

While Reich downplayed the jobs numbers, they do represent the biggest jobs gain since May and marked the 12th month in a row that payrolls grew.

The new Labor Department numbers offered proof, Bush campaign officials said Friday, that the president’s economic policies are working.

“Jobs are being added to payrolls across America, and economic indicators are pointed in the right direction because President Bush’s pro-growth economic policies have spurred businesses to expand and hire more workers while encouraging consumers to spend and invest in our economy,” Bush campaign spokesman Kevin Madden said in a press release.

The latest snapshot of the jobs climate comes just two months before the presidential election. President Bush, who hurried back to the campaign trail after accepting the Republican party’s nomination for a second term Thursday, and Kerry frequently joust over the health of the economy and the availability of jobs.

Bush says his tax cuts have helped the economy rebound and that making those tax cuts permanent will spur more job creation. Kerry contends Bush’s policies benefit the wealthy, squeeze the middle class and aren’t producing significant job growth.

Outside the Bangor event, about a dozen protesters – including a cardboard cutout of the president – held signs, one of which noted the new job numbers.

The gathering of Bush supporters prompted some sarcasm from those in the Kerry campaign.

“Is that their jobs plan out there?” asked Jesse Derris, Kerry’s Maine spokesman, adding he believes Bush’s Maine campaign has favored protests over policy discussions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.