WASHINGTON –  Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers Friday showed that Missouri lost 1,900 jobs in June, which Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign points out brings the total job loss for Missouri in the first half of 2008 to 13,900 — and 438,000 for the country as a whole.

Missouri’s unemployment rate edged up to 5.7 percent, from 5.5 percent at the beginning of the year. And since January of 2001, Missouri has lost 69,200 manufacturing jobs.

In an interview with the Post-Dispatch Friday, Obama economic advisor Laura Tyson spelled out what Obama would do as president to improve the economy for working and middle-class Americans. Tyson, who is now a professor of economics and business administration at the University of California at Berkeley, served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and chairman of the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration.

Over the past year, American workers have lost 2.4 percent of their purchasing power, Tyson says. And so far this decade, family incomes have fallen by more than $950, which she calls “unprecedented in a period of expansion of the U.S. economy.”

Immediately, Obama would seek a second round of stimulus assistance, of $50 billion (compared to the $150 billion of the first stimulus package), Tyson says. Along with direct relief, it would include energy rebates, foreclosure prevention funds, extension of unemployment compensation and aid to states.

Ninety-five percent of taxpayers would get tax relief, of about $1,000 each. And income taxes would be eliminated for elderly workers earning less than $50,000 a year.

In Missouri, a married couple with two children, one of them in college, would get total tax relief — including from mortgage, college, health care and pension — of $3,700, Tyson says.

In the long term, Obama’s package includes a variety of ways to make the American economy more competitive, including a focus on education with particular emphasis on early childhood education. And a “green-jobs emphasis” would include spending $150 billion over 10 years to move the United States toward alternative energy sources, Tyson says.