Good economic news for Bush today :

The nation’s employers added 308,000 new jobs in March, hiring at the fastest pace in four years and providing long-awaited evidence the weak jobs market may be gaining steam.

At the same time, the civilian unemployment rate bumped up to 5.7 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

In a separate survey of companies, the figures showed widespread hiring in industries across the economy at a time when President Bush’s re-election campaign, counting heavily on a pickup in the jobs market, jumped into high gear.

For the first time in 44 months, the nation’s factories did not shed jobs. But they weren’t hiring either. March’s figures show zero gains and losses for manufacturers hammered by the economic downturn that began three years ago. The only sector losing jobs last month was information services, where companies cut about 1,000 jobs.

Okay, so it’s not all good news, but it’s still (for once) keeping pace with Bush’s economic forecasts. As Atrios points out, this is definitely a success :

The next point of comparison is the administration’s own predictions. They’ve made so many different ones that it’s hard to know which one to use at the point of comparison. Probably the approprate one to use is the one they used to justify their last tax cut, which was sold as a jobs program, proving that we are indeed “all Keynesians now.”

They promised an average of 306,000 jobs per month through the end of 2004. They haven’t actually achieved anything close to that in a single month, let alone on average.

So, let’s choose our criteria in advance. Anything under 140K is seriously bad. A number between 140K and 240K isn’t particularly good, but at least a sign that things could be picking up. And, anything under 306K is proof that the tax cuts are not working as promised.

But lets go back to the end of that first article and check out this revealing tidbit :

Retailers added 47,000 jobs last month, led by the striking California grocery workers agreeing to a new contract and returning to work.

Is this really fair to add to these numbers? These weren’t new jobs. The grocery workers were just returning to the jobs which they already had. Even if adding the returning workers is standard for this kinda thing, it still means that these numbers are being inflated by a one time occurrence. Take those away and you’ll see jobs growth that’s inconsistent with the president’s own predictions.