What Are They Smoking at the Department of Labor?

Don't get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.

But the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.

http://nypost.com/business/23936.htm

Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.

That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.

As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.

Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.

Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year.

Bush will probably give in to temptation and start crowing about the economy, going against the mood, as captured by pollsters.

This will make him look as out of touch with reality as his father did.