and of course the most basic comeback to Republicans would be that they weren't even creating temporary jobs. They weren't creating any jobs at all. they were losing them at a record pace.

NPR's expert said this morning that none of the jobs growth was significant. Besides all those census workers, a lot of the March jobs growth was hiring that was going to be done in February but got postponed because of the snow storms that month.

See? Job growth in March doesn't count because it should have occurred in February. That analysis made my head spin.

Parsing the jobs outlook just to call the Repugnants repugnant is not a helpful narrative.

The economy has destroyed jobs (and with them, lives) and dickering with the sociopaths about how bad it is is about as sensible as saying the high unemployment is unacceptable and will be around along time -- especially when yer the sec of the treasury...

Just like with the wars, the apologists for government's helplessness on the economic front doesn't work. It doesn't work because people are hurting. They lost their job or they have someone close who lost their job. They know the facts on the ground.

happy little graphs aint the the change hoped for.

the economic reality is still dismal, the rich and powerful are continually buffered from it, and happy talk 'spoze to quiet the proles.

Obama could do better than his Stepford economic advisors.

I think in Republican mythology government jobs aren't real jobs anyway.

Just to add to Lifelong Dem's comment: I heard NPR this morning, the so called expert said the census jobs were government jobs, and therefore not "real jobs"...

I wrote to NPR, hope you will too...

...Uh... wow. And here I thought I was being sarcastic.

Why is it that the Republicans seem to always be working against the average American? Why would they not encourage a positive outlook rather than continue to rally behind "Doom and Gloom" when in actuality Corporate America is doing just fine at the expense of the average worker that they continue to force into poverty?

The banking/hedge funds are having their best year of profits while sucking the last remaining money out of the populace at large.

It's disgustipating.

neill, in terms of what will happen this November, you are almost surely correct.

that doesn't make it rational.

who is worse does matter - a lot, actually - in a two-party election scenario. while the total employment numbers, even on the "blue" side of the "happy little graph" may be painful, the one point that is just inarguable is that the red side is worse.

your point that to someone whose family is facing the peril of unemployed providers "blame" doesn't matter may be true, but for those not in the immediate tragedy who care about helping that family over a longer term, it should matter.

the point of the "happy little chart" is that in November you have two choices -- neither of which is the choice of a New WPA that ensures full, gainful employment for all citizens who want it.

your choice in November is the Red Side of the Happy Little Graph or the Blue Side of the Happy Little Graph, and frankly that should be the easiest fucking choice anyone has ever faced.

progressives appear to be mathematically challenged in at least two respects: One, they see "better" and because it isn't good enough, they equate it with "worse." Two, in reality true progressives represent, by the most optimistic polling, 20% of the population and they somehow think they are a majority and that Obama and the Congress can and should just do their bidding. And I would have sworn we were the community committed to "reality."

Last year, Michael Steele made the distinction between "jobs" and "work." Government can create work, Steele admitted, but never jobs. The only difference I could see was between temporary and permanent work.

Of course, if you're a building contractor and the government hires you for one temporary project after another, that's a job.

I wonder how many of those census jobs (which are work, not REAL jobs, of course) were taken by out-of-work Tea Party folk like the guy in Ohio profiled in Teh Media this week.

Of course, REAL patriotic Americans don't take government jobs. They rely on their farm subsidy checks.

My first management job was as a crew leader for the 1990 census, when I was 20. In addition to putting real cash in my pocket (it didn't pay badly), I actually learned a ton about managing, and it wound up being a very meaningful first career step. So I don't want to hear about those jobs not counting.

I am not a conservative nor do I work for Nice Republican Radio, but the fact is 8,000,000 or more have people lost their jobs during the Great Recession. Thanks GWB. One hundred sixty thousand new jobs is a good sign, but it isn't the signal that happy days are here again.

it isn't the signal that happy days are here again.

Convenient, then, that no one has argued that or anything like it.

There is a lesson here if the census jobs really a significant addition to the job market. The easiest way to improve the employment picture is for the U.S. government to hire people to do things. FDR understood this, it would be good if Obama did as well.

Mind you, these were the same hacks and flacks that trumpeted the declining hiring market and quasi-recessionary business conditions in 2008 as the "greatest story never told".

So I suppose whether a job is "real" or not (and whether the economy is "good" is not) is all a postmodern construction in our minds ... and I guess that in turn depends on who the President is.

It is amusing (and appalling) to see the GOP adopt the same sort of intellectual dishonesty as their old adversaries in the Soviet block, back when the rigid, ideological commissars were always announcing bumper crops and increases in tractor production ... plus beating the drum about the inevitable collapse for the capitalist block. No matter what the reality on the ground.

The Republicans have adopted the tactics of their old ideological enemies ... and together with the tactics, they have imported the destructive doublethink and rigidity and closed-loop approach to reality.

I actually like the Jon Stewart approach.

Everybody refuses to send back their census forms. The government has to hire tens of thousands more census workers than it planned to go get the information. Instant economic stimulus...and Republicans won't even get to say no.

Too bad I already sent mine back. I just didn't think it through.

Carried to it's logical conclusion, every private temporary job does not count, every consultant does not count, every freelance does not count, David Frum does not count...

Does anyone except Republicans who keep to the party line have a job by this definition?

Just to add to Lifelong Dem's comment: I heard NPR this morning, the so called expert said the census jobs were government jobs, and therefore not "real jobs"...

I didn't hear the NPR segment you're referencing so I have no idea what the expert meant, but as a general matter, the argument isn't that government jobs aren't "real" jobs, it's that temporary jobs created for the sole purpose of implementing a once-in-a-decade undertaking can't reasonably be construed as job growth.

Why? Because temporary hires in this context make the job market look artificially good (well, "better" - nobody in their right mind would say it's "good" now). It'd be one thing if we were talking about an uptick in the demand for temporary workers in the private sector, because that's the first real indicator the labor market is improving ("green shoots" for real, if you will). When a labor market is on the path to recovery, we see an increase in temporary work; then part time work; then full time. That's usually the way it's worked in past recessions.

On that score, the jobs report had some encouraging news. But, in terms of hiring for the census, it's neither here nor there. The census will take place, and those workers will need to be hired, every 10 years regardless of the broader economic outlook. Those jobs tell us nothing about where the economy is headed.

There's a great deal of oversimplification here, including the, yes, sunny assertion that 162,000 jobs "created" in March signals anything like a positive recovery. The point of realistically assessing the long term value of census jobs is, indeed, the fact that they are temporary, and will, before the end of the year, contribute to job loss numbers in large numbers as well (ie, if you plan to trumpet the hiring, don't complain later when thousands lose those census jobs, distorting the downward trend, too). Overstating the positive impact of temporary census hiring distorts the overall, longer term picture.

Second, the roughly 114,00 other jobs don't necessarily tell us all that much - especially when the longer term unemployment numbers (those out of work more than six months) soared to the highest levels ever, and the percentage of those not looking for work, or making do with part time combined with those considered "unemployed" amounts to about 18% of the population, still.

Finally, there's a political story here and an economic one; and the political story does, yes, still favor Democrats, generally, if only because Republicans have less to offer on how new jobs can be created and the economy improved overall. But economically, this is a horrible story, and one month of mildly positive numbers - distorted, to some degree by the census story - do not, really, make the horror look much better. That, I think, is why, liberals should be a little cautious making too much of what small gains this report has to offer; in the long run, we've got a lot of economic pain to live through, and a lot of people will not see good news for a long, long time, census jobs or no. Keeping to the reality of how bad things are for so many people, I think, is a better way for progressives to be clear about "getting it" on the economy, than joining in the Administration's necessary spin of trying to make okay numbers seem better than they are. Just because the Obama folks have to seem glad doesn't mean we all should.

it's that temporary jobs created for the sole purpose of implementing a once-in-a-decade undertaking can't reasonably be construed as job growth

That's fine and good if you can correct all job data for the proportion of temporary, once-in-a-whatever undertaking it contains. Revise the Y2k numbers for temporary hires of COBALT programmers, the 9/11 numbers for the WTC cleanup crews, the 2008 numbers for the temporary surge in deputized marshals posting foreclosure notices on houses, etc., etc., etc.

At any point in time, our economy contains a very large number of such temporary jobs and no one has ever proposed correcting them out of the numbers. Why the unique focus on discrediting temporary census employment alone among all such jobs?

Despite all of the rosy "progressive" spin, unemployment remains at near record levels. At least half of those who are unemployed got that way during this naive era of Hope & Change. The only jobs that the Obama administration has created, or saved, are government jobs. And while they are "real" jobs, the problem is that they are paid for by those of us with private sector jobs. Government jobs do not help the GDP, they only take from the productivity of the private sector. Now, I don't expect any of you "progressives" (liberal is a dirty word, I guess) to understand the difference. Obama thinks he can employ everyone just by expanding the government and performing slight of hand accounting tricks to pay for it all. The stupidity required to believe any of it is astounding. Where were all you optimists during the last decade? The hypocrisy on this site is nauseating.

The hypocrisy on this site is nauseating.

Whereas your inability to understand employment statistics is just sadly predictable.

That's fine and good if you can correct all job data for the proportion of temporary, once-in-a-whatever undertaking it contains. Revise the Y2k numbers for temporary hires of COBALT programmers, the 9/11 numbers for the WTC cleanup crews, the 2008 numbers for the temporary surge in deputized marshals posting foreclosure notices on houses, etc., etc., etc.

I'm not proposing that we correct them out of the data; all I'm saying is it's kind of ridiculous to go around trumpeting the hiring of 48K census workers as evidence the economy is finally making a breakthrough, since they would've been hired if the employment rate were 5% or 50%. Those jobs don't really tell us anything about where the jobs market is now or where it's headed.

All I'm saying we shouldn't be reading too much into those numbers. An additional 48K jobs is good news no matter how you slice it, but it doesn't tell us much.

but the 48k census jobs are irrelevant to the larger point - leave them in, take them out, doesn't matter. Either way (a) the current number is a positive number - one of few in the past 3 years, and the largest in that time period; and (b) with or without the census jobs, the trend line remains unquestionably up.

spending a lot fo effort fighting over whether census jobs should or should not be included is rather wasteful for both sides. less so, however, for the Republicans as it is a distraction and some people may extrapolate from the noise that without the census jobs the number (or the trend) really wouldn't be positive. in that sense, when we fight over inclusion of the census jobs, we make the Right's job easier for no useful purpose.

"Obama thinks he can employ everyone just by expanding the government..." Sidizen @ 2:04 PM

FDR managed it from 1932-45. And, as with the current administration, he was cleaning up after a bunch of Republicans.

. . . all I'm saying is it's kind of ridiculous to go around trumpeting the hiring of 48K census workers as evidence the economy is finally making a breakthrough . . .

OK. So who is doing this? I haven't heard that point made. I wouldn't defend it.

But is it ok to trumpet an upswing in jobs from negative numbers to a number thrice the size of the temporary census jobs?

Is it ok to find census employment to be a fortunately timed stimulus when everyone's top priority is employment?

I've heard those last two arguments first hand. The argument that all new employment growth is census jobs is a foolishly reductionist and inaccurate argument I've only heard from Republicans launching a blatantly self-serving attempt to discredit some good numbers that favor the political opposition. I can't really see granting that argument any dignity, much less defending it. I think that's what folks commonly call a "straw man."

I mean, there's an effort afoot to cast Census spending as some sort of political trick Obama has pulled out of his hat to artificially inflate employment numbers.

In fact, it's a Constitutionally-mandated recurring expenditure that has taken place every decade since 1790. These arguments are like considering the arrival of Spring to be an evil plot by Democrats to artificially inflate crop yields.

But just wait, I'm sure Beck or Rush will be suggesting that tomorrow. Sure as sunrise. Just wait. If the U.S. happens to have good crop yields this year, it will be a socialist plot to promote collectivism or some such. The same if crops fail. It's all beyond parody. But at least we should try to discern the difference between parody and actual argument, right?

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