According to a report released Friday, the US added 271,000 non farm jobs, which makes it the best month for the economy in that regard in a long time. As a side note, I understand the reason to differentiate between farming and non farming jobs, but it always cracks me up when I read it in print. It's like saying "all the real white collar workers are doing well, don't mind what those hicks out on the farm are doing!" When I was living in Israel, it was popular for the people to say that one Israeli being held prisoner was the equivalent of 5000 prisoners the Israelis had. And they really believed that! That's what the job report reminds me of. One non farm job is worth 5000 farming jobs in the eyes of the economy. A worker at General Motors (NYSE: GM) on an assembly line is better than a measly apple picker. Regardless, I always try to take a very skeptical eye when job reports are released. My conspiracy theorist side wants to believe that the numbers can be juiced to try to benefit a political party. Statistics are complicated in general, and as the old saying goes "statistics can be made to prove anything." Until someone comes up with a way of determining how the monthly fluctuation in the job report truly correlates to the health of the economy, I see stuff like this as just more noise.