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Blow jobs or no jobs. Take your pick — an actual newspaper-reading president who gets blow jobs and oversees the greatest economic expansion in history, or a faux Christian who speedily investigates Janet Jackson's right tit and loses jobs by the millions (FindLaw/Reuters):

Planned job cuts in January were 26 percent higher than in December as U.S. jobs moved to countries like India, China and the Philippines, and as mergers made some jobs redundant, according to a report on Tuesday.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said post-holiday job cuts reached 117,556 in January surpassing the 100,000 threshold for the first time since last October.

Financial markets were on their toes awaiting January's payrolls report to be issued by the Labor Department on Friday after a disappointing December report that showed an increase of only 1,000 jobs.

Analysts had expected 150,000 new jobs to show up in the data, and the worse-than-expected outcome showed that the U.S. economic recovery has yet to produce sustained jobs growth. Economists again expect a figure of 150,000 new jobs in January.

Poor job creation is a headache for President Bush as he seeks re-election in November. The economy -- specifically job creation -- is expected to be a key issue in the campaign. Since Bush took office, more than 2.3 million non-farm jobs have been lost.

Economists who "expect" 150,000 jobs to be created in January 2004 should revise their expectations to something six digits south of zilch.

{ 6:09 PM }

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