Josh Marshall pressing the preznit

Yesterday he was wanting the Nit to hire a statistician. Today he wants him to set his job growth sites a little higher. What next?

...Scott McClellan listed as one of the signs the economy was on the right track the fact that "there have been more than 366,000 new jobs created in the last five months."...

Now, the problem here is that everyone at the White House from the president on down is trumpeting this number like it's a good thing, when in fact, it's not.

If I'm not mistaken there's a general consensus among economists that in our current economic circumstances we need roughly 150,000 new jobs created each month just to break even -- basically, just to keep up with a growing working age population.

So just to break even on the employment front we needed about 750,000 new jobs to have been created over the last five months. In fact, the economy created just less than half that number. So basically, 366,000 new jobs in five months isn't very good at all.

The president is pleased that on his watch the economy can't even produce enough jobs to keep up with a growing population? Can't he set his sights a bit higher?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.