May Jobs Report - Terrible

As I stood on the set of CNN American Morning, I was nearly speechless as Christine Romans scribbled down the Bureau of Labor Statistics results for last month. The May Jobs report was terrible. Yes, there were 431,000 new jobs created, but don't fall for this head fake. Of the jobs created, a whopping 411,000 were census workers hired on a temporary basis by Uncle Sam.

Let's put that into perspective: the U.S. economy needs to add something in the neighborhood of 125,000 jobs each month just to keep pace with new entrants to the work force and analysts believe that it will take a bunch of 250,000+ jobs a month to really put a dent in the unemployment rate. This was a terrible report.

Adding to the concern: those census workers who were happy to find income even on a temporary basis, will be let go in the coming months. In fact starting in June, the impact of the Census on the payroll report will be negative.

The other area that is worrisome is the stubbornly high number of long-term unemployed. There are 6.8 million people who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, which constitutes 46% of the 15 million total unemployed. Did I mention that this was a terrible report? - CBS News Story

Obama Team Attacks Arizona Immigration Law

The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that upheld Arizona's right to punish employers for hiring illegal immigrants.

The Arizona law gives the state the right to suspend or terminate business licenses.

"If you hire

a person in this country illegally knowingly, you'll lose your license. First offense, 10 days. Second offense, revocation, never to do business in the state of Arizona again," said Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican who helped draft the new controversial Arizona law that cracks down on illegal immigrants.

The Obama administration apparently worries letting that law stand would leave in place a precedent that states have a legitimate role in enforcing immigration laws – a notion the administration fiercely opposes.

"The argument that the Justice Department is making here, is you know, the fundamental question, which is where does state authority begin and end when it comes to federal immigration law?" said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council.

The Arizona statue relies on a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1986, which made clear federal law preempts the states on immigration – but left one exception: "The provisions of this section preempt any state or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ unauthorized aliens."

"Congress said very clearly that licensing and similar laws can be used to impose consequences on employers who hire unauthorized aliens at the state level," said Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. "And that's exactly what Arizona did."

Oddly enough, the law in question was signed in 2007 by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano, now Obama's Homeland Security secretary. - FOX News Story

Jobs Numbers Look Good - But They really Aren't

WASHINGTON -- A wave of census hiring lifted payrolls by 431,000 in May, but job creation by private companies grew at the slowest pace since the start of the year. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent as people gave up searching for work.

The Labor Department's new employment snapshot released Friday suggested that outside of the burst of hiring of temporary census workers by the federal government many private employers are wary of bulking up their work forces.

That indicates the economic recovery can only plod along and won't have the energy to quickly bring relief to millions of unemployed Americans.

Virtually all the job creation in May came from the hiring of 411,000 census workers. Such hiring peaked in May and will begin tailing off in June.

By contrast, hiring by private employers, the backbone of the economy, slowed sharply. They added just 41,000 jobs, down from 218,000 in April and the fewest since January. - FOX News Story

Obama Transparency - Back Room Deals

The White House faced fresh questions over back-room dealmaking after the White House acknowledged one of President Obama's top advisers had suggested to a Democratic candidate the potential for an administration

job in lieu of challenging the candidate whom the president favored in the Colorado Senate race.

Former Colorado House of Representatives Speaker Andrew Romanoff on Wednesday night released a copy of an e-mail in which White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina described three federal international development jobs that might be available to him if he were not challenging Sen. Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination.

Click here to read the e-mail from Messina to Romanoff.

"He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions," Romanoff said in a statement. "At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one."

Earlier in the day, a White House official said no formal offer was ever made and insisted there was nothing inappropriate in the contacts -- rhetoric similar to the explanation given last week when the White House admitted it orchestrated a job offer to Senate candidate Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania primary. - FOX News Story

Obama Administration Answering More Questions of Job Offers

The White House acknowledged having made overtures to Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff about a possible administration appointment Thursday, the morning after the former state legislator said White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina offered to consider Romanoff for three posts as an alternative to his Senate campaign.

In a statement released at 6:25 a.m., press secretary Robert Gibbs said Messina reached out to Romanoff to see if it would be possible to steer him away from a primary challenge to appointed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, and that Romanoff had applied previously for a position at USAID during the presidential transition.

"Andrew Romanoff applied for a position at USAID during the Presidential transition. He filed this application through the Transition on-line process. After the new administration took office, he followed up by phone with White House personnel," Gibbs said. "Jim Messina called and emailed Romanoff last September to see if he was still interested in a position at USAID, or if, as had been reported, he was running for the US Senate. Months earlier, the President had endorsed Senator Michael Bennet for the Colorado seat, and Messina wanted to determine if it was possible to avoid a costly battle between two supporters." - Politico Story

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