WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Private employers have added jobs for 28 straight months, proving the resilience of the U.S. economy despite ill-conceived efforts by conservatives in Congress to enforce austerity measures that would surely strangle economic growth. The share of the U.S. population with a job held steady in June as private-sector employers added 84,000 people to their payrolls. Government continued to shed workers, but the pace has slowed considerably, with only 4,000 losing their jobs in June.

Look no further than the Republican leadership in Congress for the reasons for today’s disappointing jobs numbers. In January 2011, as the 112th Congress came into power, the Republican leadership said they had one goal — keep President Barack Obama from getting re-elected. Even then, the consensus was that the big election story would be the economy and jobs. If the economy were performing well, the incumbent’s chances of re-election would be pretty good. In service of their goal, conservative leaders in Congress have focused on imposing austerity on the U.S. economy and refusing to implement policies that create jobs.

This is shameful.

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio said that the new jobs data indicate the failure of the Obama administration’s policies. But data actually tell a very different story: Where the administration acted, jobs came back. In June of 2009, President Obama rescued the auto industry. Last month, the motor vehicles and parts industry added 6,700 jobs, for a total of 150,000 since June 2009. The pace of job creation in automobile manufacturing has been faster than any time since the late 1990s. Overall, manufacturing added 11,000 jobs in June, for a total of 154,000 so far in 2012, even though the manufacturing sector activity index declined in June, for the first time in three years.