More Lying about Jobs

From Froomkin in the WaPo Yesterday:

Eduardo Porter wrote in Monday's New York Times: "There was a time when adding just under 150,000 jobs a month, three years into an economic recovery, would have been considered a disaster. As recently as last December, President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers forecast that in 2004 employment would grow, on average, by about 216,000 jobs a month.

"Yet on Friday, when the Labor Department reported employment growth of 144,000 jobs in August and bumped up its earlier estimates for June and July, yielding a three-month average of 104,000 new jobs a month, many economists said it was good news."

This morning, the Times ran a correction: "A news analysis article in Business Day yesterday about the economy's lackluster rate of job creation misstated the pace of employment growth foreseen by the president's Council of Economic Advisers last December. To realize the council's forecast of the total number of jobs held by Americans in 2004, the economy would have to create more than 300,000 jobs a month this year, not 216,000."

This truly needs to be hammered home repeatedly by Kerry supporters until the media figures out that a 144,000 new job report is both not very good, and substantially below what the Administration promised. A level, 300,000 new jobs a month, that they have only come close to once.