MSNBC: "Payrolls PUMPED...the most jobs added in 5 months" (McJobs)

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8837409/

WASHINGTON - Employers expanded their payrolls by 207,000 in July, the most in five months, while unemployment rate held steady at 5 percent, the government reported Friday.

The latest snapshot from the Labor Department offered strong evidence that the job climate is improving considerably.

Boosts in hiring came in retailing, education and health services, financial activities and construction. But factories shed jobs for the second straight month.

The labor market is the one part of the economy that has had difficulty getting back to full health after the 2001 recession. President Bush wants to see both jobs and the economy on solid footing as he tries to sell his plan for overhauling the Depression-era Social Security retirement system. Friday’s report offered hope that the labor market recovery might stay in a higher gear and suggested that surging energy prices were not crimping employment.

[Merlot]

1. "Depression-era Social Security retirement system"

I dare you to find the bias in that statement....

[FloridaPat]

2. It's summer jobs time. Retailing - OK, maybe. Education?

Summer school? Camps for kids? Construction - it's summer time up north, so time to do all that road construction and other construction they can't do in 3 feet of snow. Health services - back to camps for kids maybe? And lastly financial activites. Banks keep merging. Telemarketers for mortgage refiniancy and debt relief? Gee, most jobs since Xmas.

[papau]

3. Without the pretend "birth/death" numbers, Bush has lost a million

jobs since January 2001.

The "birth/death" numbers are a guess at the number of jobs not paying payroll tax and therefore missed by the DOL's "establishment" survey - which is a count of payroll tax paying folks.

Pretend numbers due lead to silly conclusions - although the jobs growth of 207,000 is a "seasonally adjusted number" - and the birth/death was minus 80000 last year for July, making this years minus 76000 a bounce up (a resulting higher estimate of job growth) in the game of "job growth under Bush" announcments..

I conclude that the economy is growing - in jobs - but ever so slowly - and not in the high paying job area.

[flpoljunkie]

4. And Wall Street responds to the possibility of future wage increases by--

you guessed it--down almost 45points. Wall Street sees more jobs as possible wage increases for workers and increased interest rates.

Workers' wages, the so-called "Main Street" is anathema to them.