that boy there, well he's playing the fool For some reason I'm suspicious of the job reports that come out that continue to be consistently and mysteriously "better than forecast". Especially under Bush, who seems to have people willing to fudge numbers and data all over the place to make his presidency look like less of a fiasco. So I was interested to see this article in the New York Times about how the markets (i.e. analysts) didn't seem to trust the report either.

Some economists saw distortions in the data. With seasonal adjustment factors removed, nearly half of the gain in private jobs came from an estimate that the Labor Department makes each month about how many jobs were added by new businesses, known as the “birth and death” model. The Labor Department did not actually find evidence of these jobs; it assumed they were created based on historical patterns.

A separate survey of households, also conducted by the Labor Department, presented a very different picture of the job market. It showed that fewer Americans over all were employed in October. The labor force shrank by 211,000 jobs, and 465,000 Americans said they were no longer working or seeking work.

So yeah, he's doing a great job, Mister Bush is. And he's quick to point it out for you if you missed it:

President Bush, speaking in Columbia, S.C., said the report offered support for his administration’s economic platform. “This is now our 50th consecutive month of uninterrupted job growth, the longest in the nation’s history,” he said.

That country is headed for some rough times, that's what I think. And we're all going along for the ride, whether we like it or not.  | ¶ 7:08 p.m.