Good news for the economy: weak job growth

The latest employment reports are out for April, and they don't look good:

The U.S. economy added a weaker-than-expected 88,000 jobs in April, the slimmest gain in
more than two years, as employment fell in retail and manufacturing, and unemployment edged up, a Labor Department showed on Friday.

The employment report, which included an expected gain in the unemployment rate to 4.5% from 4.4% in March, showed the job market has decelerated as expected following sluggish growth in the first three months of 2007.

The median forecast of Wall Street analysts put jobs up 100,000 last month.

Adding to the picture of a slightly less robust jobs market, the government revised down its estimate for jobs created in March by 3,000 and in February by 23,000.

Of course, if you happen to be a Republican fat cat living off your investments (as I do), this is great news:

The mild jobs report could give some comfort to the Federal Reserve, which has worried that a tight labor market could cause inflationary pressures.

I'm going to ask the question once again. What the hell is an economy for if not to create jobs for its citizens? The Fed's charter gives it three responsibilities; full employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates. From Section 2a of the Federal Reserve Act:

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

The Fed has systematically ignored the first goal under its Republican controllers who care not one wit about the "working man."

Don't forget, job growth of about 150,000 is needed just to keep pace with population growth.