The economy still isn't creating enough jobs to keep up with population growth, but things are slowly improving thanks to the president's first major success, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Here's the latest version of the familiar job-creation graph. The point on the graph when everything turns around is March 2009 with the passage of the ARRA.
Payrolls increased by 244,000 workers last month, the biggest gain since May 2010, after a revised 221,000 increase the prior month, the Labor Department said. Economists had projected an April rise of 185,000, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Employment excluding government jobs jumped the most in five years. The jobless rate rose to 9 percent, the first increase since November.
Excellent, but not good enough -- and, of course, the Republicans are deliberately sabotaging job creation with their ineffectual trickle-down policies.