March Employment Numbers Padded by Obama's Census Bureau 'Cultural Facilitators'

Everyone's making a big deal out of the job numbers up today. Excitable Steve Benen titles his post, "BREAKTHROUGH MONTH FOR U.S. JOB MARKET...."

But fully one-half of the increase comes from the addition of dead-end "cultural faciliator" census jobs that the administration is promoting as part of its $14.8 billion head-count pork-barrel vote-stuffing project. From LAT, "Census Project Adds to the Job Picture When it Counts":

When March employment figures are released Friday by the Department of Labor, analysts are expecting to see the biggest U.S. job gains in more than two years.

But perhaps half the 200,000 or so positions expected to be added to payrolls may be the byproduct of a government effort that has turned into a fortuitous job generator: the U.S. census.

The constitutionally mandated nationwide head count arrives this year at a crucial time -- after the start of the country's economic recovery, but before private-sector employers have created many jobs. That's a stroke of luck for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for failing to revive the labor market. And it's a windfall for the 700,000 temporary employees the census expects to hire, although most of the jobs will last only two to six weeks.

This year's census isn't just about counting heads, it's helping create jobs in an economy that needs them badly ...

Despite the exuberance of the enumerators, some observers worry that the census hiring will do little but temporarily mask ongoing weakness in the labor market. Some analysts said it's unlikely that other parts of the economy would begin generating significant numbers of new jobs to take up the slack by the time census hiring winds down. And the stimulus generated by all those new paychecks will be modest.

"It's helpful, it's in the right direction, but the amount of income being created is small compared to the overall size of a $14-trillion economy," said Dana Johnson, a chief economist with Comerica Bank.

Still, something is better than nothing, said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's.

"We'd rather they were real jobs as opposed to temporary jobs," he said. "But $10 an hour beats zero dollars an hour."

Michael Steel, the spokesman for House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, was harsher in his criticism.

"The U.S. economy has lost more than 3 million jobs since President Obama signed the trillion-dollar 'stimulus' into law amid promises it would create jobs 'immediately,' " he said. "Everyone understands that temporary census hiring may inflate the statistics released on Friday, but the American people will rightly continue to ask, 'Where are the jobs?' "

The government is spending $14.8 billion on the latest census to count the population, Census Bureau spokeswoman Shelly Lowe said. Training has begun across the country, but most enumerators will begin hitting the streets in early May to conduct head counts.

Image Credit: NYT, "A Wall in East Harlem Speaks: Stand Up and Be Counted."