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The New York Times editorializes and hyperbolizes this morning about yesterday's jobs report:

...no one was quite prepared for a job report as weak as the one released yesterday. Only 88,000 jobs were created in April, the smallest gain in nearly two and half years...

Surely it's a lie that "no one was quite prepared." The consensus among economists for yesterday's number was 100,000 -- an average which virtually has to embrace estimates both higher and lower, certainly low enough to include the tiny 12% disappointment from 100,000 to 88,000. Besides, the Times' own news coverage in this morning's business section proves that plenty of people were "quite prepared," at least among the gallery of pessimists whom the Times habitully cites as "experts" on the economy. Here's a fellow who was "quite prepared" for yesterday's news -- in fact, it sounds like he's been just as "quite prepared" as any broken clock waiting to be right twice a day:

?One of the biggest puzzles of the last year has been why employment hadn?t slowed more,? said Richard J. DeKaser, chief economist at the National City Corporation.

Here's a howler:

?There are some weak spots emerging,? said Ian Morris, chief economist of HSBC Securities. ?I think it?s too early to call it a turning point? toward markedly slower job growth, but, he added, ?I suspect that as time moves on we?ll see that this was the turning point.?

Six months from now, that fool will be able to claim he was right no matter what happens -- but for now, it's negative enough for the Times. Here's another:

?It all comes back to consumption,? said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. ?What else is G.D.P. going to fire on??

Ah, yes, our old reliable friend Jared Bernstein -- whom Larry Kudlow has on his show specifically to represent a liberal view, but whom the Times always quotes as though he were perfectly objective (failing to mention that EPI is a left-leaning labor-funded advocacy organization). But to answer Mr. Bernstein's question, G.D.P. is going to "fire on" production, not consumption. That's why they call it G.D.P. and not G.D.C.

Update [5/7/2007]... Our monetary affairs correspondent "Irrational Exuberance" has some intriguing observations:

The weird thing about that quote from Richard DeKaser in the Times is that at +168k DeKaser had the *highest* forecast submitted to Bloomberg as an estimate for last Friday's non-farm payrolls report.

Also, the Times says, "[N]o one was quite prepared for a job report as weak as the one released yesterday." But the economic derivatives auction that finished 30 minutes before the report showed that investors were expecting a result of 81k, which the actual report overshot (at least by the narrow headline measure of the April print.)

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