[Airbornelawyer]

Moving the goalposts:

From his perch on the New York Times editorial page, Bush-hating liberal Princeton economist Paul Krugman on Oct. 31, 2003 pooh-poohed the 2nd quarter 2003 economic growth numbers. He did raise the valid point that brief spurts aren't the same as sustained recovery. He stated that, among other things, sustained high employment growth would be necessary. The benchmark? "And unless we start to see serious job growth — by which I mean increases in payroll employment of more than 200,000 a month — consumer spending will eventually slide, and bring growth down with it."

On April 9, 2004, he finally got around to addressing the report of 308,000 jobs created in March, calling the growth "nothing special." So in October 2003, serious job growth was 200,000 new jobs, while by April 2004, 300,000 new jobs was nothing special. Sustained growth of 300,000 per month apparently is the new baseline (for comparison, during the Clinton Administration's 96 months, there were 26 with greater than 300,000 job growth).

Of course, now the 308,000 has been revised upward to 353,000. Maybe 350,000 will be the new baseline, and Bush will get credit for only one good month.

Assuming the 248,000 doesn't get revised upward (not a bet I'd take, given earlier revisions), that's almost a million new jobs in three months. Several months back, Bush was pilloried in the media for predicting 2.6 million new jobs in 2004, the high end of Labor Department economic forecasts. 2.6 million might end up being low. We are already at 1,189,000 - if job growth slips back to that measly 200,000 per month, we hit 2.6 million this year.

Regarding revisions upward this year:

Jan. 04 - initial: 112,000 revised: 159,000 (+47,000)
Feb. 04 - initial: 21,000 revised: 83,000 (+62,000)
Mar. 04 - initial: 308,000 revised: 353,000 (+45,000)
Apr. 04 - initial: 288,000 revised: 346,000 (+58,000)
May 04 - initial: 248,000 revised: ?