The White House boasted on Friday that December's improved jobless report pointed to an economy on the rebound, but skeptics called it "smoke and mirrors."

“While any decrease in overall unemployment should be watched with cautious optimism, today’s jobs numbers offer troubling signs for job creators and hard-working families alike," said Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Tallahassee.

"The Obama administration continues to use smoke and mirrors to insist that his ‘stimulus’ agenda is creating long-term jobs, but any small-business owner will recognize that many of these recent hires are temporary workers for the Christmas holidays," Southerland charged.

Of the 200,000 jobs created in December, 42,000 came from the seasonal "couriers and messengers" category. Work force observers say those positions are usually extinct by the end of January.

Though the official unemployment rate declined from 8.7 percent to 8.5 percent, the December report contained several warning signs:

• The unemployment rate for blacks increased to 15.8 percent.
• There are nearly 2 million fewer private-sector jobs today than when Obama entered office.
• Millions of "discouraged" workers remain off the books, uncounted by the labor statistics and artificially lowering the jobless rate.

Employment analysts estimate that if the private sector was as large today as when Obama was inaugurated, the December jobless rate would be 10.9 percent. And if the legions of people who have given up looking for work were factored into the equation, the current jobless rate would be 15.2 percent.

Nevertheless, Alan Krueger, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said Friday's employment report "provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression."

Media reports amplified that upbeat message. Although no U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been re-elected when unemployment exceeded 7.2 percent, pundits suggested that the "trend line" is what counts heading into the fall elections.

With the lowest unemployment rate since Obama's first full month in office -- and down 0.9 points in the past year -- the administration is hoping for continued improvement.

“The good news is that the number of business owners cutting jobs has ‘normalized,'" said William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business.

"In the past several months, reports of those cutting workers have been at the lowest levels since the recession started in December 2007. Initial claims for unemployment are now running closer to 375,000 -- a great improvement in recent months," Dunkelberg said.

"Given this trend, reports of new job creation should see a slight uptick in the coming months."

Republicans on Capitol Hill maintain that the Obama administration's stimulus and spending policies that have jacked up the federal deficit and added more than $5 trillion to the national debt are retarding economic growth.

"To reduce unemployment below 8 percent for the first time in 35 months, it’s going to take a common-sense agenda that creates permanent jobs. This process can begin with a New Year’s resolution by the president and Senate Democrats to approve the 28 House-passed jobs bills that have piled up on [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid’s desk," Southerland said.

In a letter to Obama about another impending increase in the nation's debt ceiling, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned that the administration's policies were turning the United States into a "deadbeat nation."

Rubio reiterated his call for an economic plan featuring "both pro-growth elements and spending restraints, including fundamental tax reform, regulatory reform, meaningful cuts to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security and Medicare."