There was finally a good jobs report this month, showing a gain of 162,000 jobs in the month of March. It’s the best jobs report in 3 years, giving further evidence of the beginning of a recovery. Republicans tried to get in front of the good news by denying it’s good news:
The RNC immediately responded by releasing a briefing that claims that the job growth occured “mostly” due to hiring Census workers:
But March Job Growth Is “Disappointment” Because Job Gains Mostly From Census. “CalculatedRisk reports that even if Friday’s employment report shows a gain of 200,000 jobs in March, as expected, it might be viewed as a disappointment: ‘The March report will be distorted by two factors: 1) any bounce back from the snow storms, and 2) the decennial Census hiring that picked up sharply in March. … Also the Census will add something like 100,000 workers to the March report …” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 4/2/10; Ben White and Eamon Javers, Politico’s “Morning Money,” 3/30/10)
The referenced articles were all published before the actual jobs report came out. It turns out that most of the jobs were created in the private sector. Census hiring only accounted for 48,000 jobs in the March report (I find the argument that census jobs aren’t jobs is a little strange, anyway).
The RNC’s claim bears little relation to reality. Of the 162,000 jobs added to the economy last month, 123,000 were in the private sector. Joel Naroff, the president of Naroff Economic Advisors, wrote in a note to clients that “the federal government didn’t hire nearly as many Census workers as thought. It was the private sector that stepped up to the plate.” In fact, the Census Bureau hired only 48,000 workers. Speaker Pelosi’s office put out a chart using Bureau of Labor Statistics data that illustrates the job gains:
The recovery is still new and fragile and unemployment is still way too high at 9.7%, but we’re definitely starting to see a positive trend.