Left I on the News

All over the news today is this alleged great news:

The nation added jobs at the fastest pace in three years last month...the surest sign yet that the worst employment market in a generation has finally snapped back.

Well down in the print versions of this "great news," and frequently unmentioned in the broadcast versions, is that 50,000 of the 162,000 new jobs were temporary jobs with the census, hardly anything that would indicate the "end of the recession" or anything remotely close to that.

Completely unmentioned in every story I've seen, print or broadcast, is what I long ago termed "inflation-adjusted employment" - the fact that something like 140,000 jobs per month need to be created just to keep up with population growth. Meaning that, subtracting out the short-term census jobs, there was actually a 30,000 or so job shrinkage in employment after adjusting for population growth. Hardly cause for "crowing" about anything, although obviously, it's better than months when jobs are actually lost, not just in inflation-adjusted terms, but in real terms.