You really have to wonder these days how reliable the news is. And I don’t care if it’s positive or negative. First we have the journalists who are making up stories, the media moguls who deliberately cater to the government and even the half-blind bigot Noam Chomsky is capable of recognizing that U.S. media is propagandistic.

Today comes a story that “Job Growth Skyrockets” in the United States. According to the story, last month saw the largest gain in jobs since April 2000 — four years ago. Nevertheless, while all these new jobs were created, a puzzling thing happened: Unemployment also went up. This is said to be because more people started looking for jobs. There’s something funky there. So these people who weren’t looking for jobs (because they had given up, the story says) weren’t unemployed before something caused them to try again? And, at any rate, if this astronomical new set of jobs were just created, why weren’t these people able to find jobs and get off the unemployment lists?

I hope this is a sign of the economy improving — although I personally don’t see how George Bush’s massive deficit creation should get credit for that — but I admit to more than a little skepticism when I realize that not only was this gain astronomical, but it was completely unexpected, even by economists who study such things all the time.

And you gotta love this “average work week” thing. No doubt it’s computed by taking all the people who can only find 10-hour-a-week jobs and bashing those against those of us who have to work 40-plus hours per week. I mean, wowser! I don’t know anyone who actually gets to have only a 33.7 hours! (Manufacturing people, who probably have some of the most dangerous jobs in America, also have the longest work week average at 40.9. Again, I’ve no doubt that many of them work significantly longer work weeks.)

Still, what I really want to know is how a record number of jobs — catching all the economists by surprise — were created, inspiring George Bush to give a thumbs up, at the exact same time that actual people who have jobs fell (see third to last paragraph of the linked Jobs Growth story) and unemployment went up.

Who’s wagging this dog, anyway, Mr. Bush?