Pres. Bush pushing all the right buttons. Great job W.

US job growth unexpectedly strong in July WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job growth picked up last month as employers added 207,000 workers to their payrolls, a healthy gain that outstripped Wall Street expectations, a government report showed on Friday.

The unemployment rate held steady at the 2-3/4-year low of 5 percent reached in June, the Labor Department said.

While some economists had thought the report might be skewed by Hurricane Dennis, which battered the Florida panhandle in mid-July, the department said the storm appeared to have no discernible impact on the data.

Overall, the report was a bit stronger than Wall Street analysts had expected. Economists had forecast a job gain of 183,000 with the jobless rate steady.

A net upward revision of 42,000 to the job growth figures for May and June contributed to the report's solid tenor. U.S. employers added 166,000 workers in June and 126,000 in May.

The factory sector, which shed 4,000 workers, was one of the only weak spots last month. However, the Labor Department noted that an 11,000-job drop in auto manufacturing reflected larger-than-normal temporary plant shutdowns for annual retooling.

This was the last piece of significant economic data that

Federal Reserve policy-makers will have to mull when they meet on Tuesday to set interest rates.

The Fed, which has raised the benchmark overnight lending rate at each of its last nine meetings, is widely expected to bump it up another quarter-percentage point to 3.5 percent next week. Financial markets see the rate at 4 percent by year end.

Average hourly earnings shot up six cents, or 0.4 percent, in July

The number of job cuts announced by US employers in July jumped to 102,971, 48 percent higher than the same month last year; led by reductions at consumer product and computer makers and financial service companies, a private survey showed.

July was the fifth month this year in which employers announced more reductions than they did in the same month in 2004.

A total of 641,245 job cuts have been announced so far this year, up 18 percent from the same period in 2004. Concern about the health of the economy will increase if this pace continues for the rest of the year, Challenger said.

Only 66% of Americans eligible to work are working, a record low.

The U.S. work week is down to 33.5 hours (due to the high number of part time jobs), another record low.

Cant prove your lies and distortions so you resort to using phony screen names and vicious attacks.

This....is the funniest shit I've read in a long time! <laughing hysterically> It's even better than whizbang/traveler/creosote's submissions of late, and they're epic!

Miles 'The Cheap Harry Knock-Off Strikes Again' Long

I get it! You write for The Onion!

This is too funny not to be satire.

A poster using a stolen nym and posting unsourced articles complaining about someone using a phony screen name and not posting cites.

Unfortunately, the poor dumb boy just can't see the irony in his

Surrender noted.