Yep, it's Barack Obama's best month yet, and the smallest number since Obama was elected. Still, unemployment rose to 8.9 percent, the highest it's been since 1983. HotAir notes that the smaller job loss numbers come on the back of a single employer, the federal government:
The administration will hammer on that 539,000 number in order to show progress, but that’s deceptive. The loss in private-sector employment actually came to 611,000, more than the 590,000 jobs anaylsts expected. How did they get to 539,000?
Losses in April were tempered by a big 72,000 jump in government payrolls and overall, private sector employment fell by 611,000 last month.
Governments used stimulus money to hire workers in April. Most of those jobs are on “shovel-ready projects,” and won’t be permanent employment, while the rest will expand bureaucracies needed to manage those jobs. More to the point, all of those jobs cost American taxpayers, including the unemployed, to maintain. That doesn’t create wealth and opportunity as much as it sucks both out of the market, and allow politicians to claim credit for growth that doesn’t exist.
Actually, the jobs aren't really shovel-ready in the traditionally sense of the phrase. No, it seems that 66,000 of the 72,000 new government jobs are census takers. In other words, ACORN workers paid by you and me to over-count the illegal immigrant and homeless population. And they'll be unemployed again in a year unless Obama finds a way to make them permanent.
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