Turns out people have been losing jobs faster than the economy has been creating them. Well, we knew that already. But this is proof positive. And when you add this to the fact that many of the new jobs are government jobs, it destroys the notion that Dubya's tax cuts will lead us to a rosy employment future.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040415/bs_nm/economy_jobless_dc_1
I'm no econonomics whiz, anymore than most Americans are. But I know how to add and subtract. If we got 308,000 newly employed people, but 360,000 people filed for unemployment for the first time, we're going down, not up.
I know employment rates present a fuzzy and confusing picture, making it easy for incumbents and challengers alike to cherrypick their facts, and interpret them to their advantage.
However, I find it hard to see how any self-respecting administration would want to brag about the current employment situation.
Unless, of course, they had nothing else to brag about.