A decade ago, a group of political advisors relentlessly preached the message to their candidate “it’s the economy, stupid.”  Now, in the midst of yet another political season, let me offer a small refinement of that advice.  That is, when it comes to the economy, GDP doesn’t matter.  It’s all about jobs.

The fact that some of you reading this might not follow what I just said is part of the problem.  Economists pore over every nuance of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s quarterly report on Gross Domestic Product in the national economy, because we recognize it as the most comprehensive scorecard on the performance of the national economy available.  But outside of our tiny profession, very few people even know what the letters GDP stand for, let alone know what it represents.

That situation is unlikely to ever change.  After all, the whole idea of adding up everything that is produced in the economy into a single number is the invention of economists, and it is produced by economists.  Is it any surprise that the only people who seem to pay it any attention are also economists?

Jobs are another matter entirely.  Counting heads in the nation’s workplaces is not only easier to understand, but it also has a direct connection with the economic welfare of the families and households getting the paychecks.  That’s why you get so many incredulous looks when you stand up in front of an audience and tell them that the recession of 2001 ended almost two and a half years ago.  Until the job counts in the economy turn upward, their faces tell you, it really doesn’t matter.

Happily, that day has finally arrived, for both the national and the state economies.  A few months of solid job gains, of course, won’t immediately erase the losses suffered during the course of the entire recession.  But it sure beats going in the other direction.

The U.S. economy added 288,000 payroll jobs in the month of April, coming off an upwardly revised 337,000 job gain in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The April gain caps a seven month streak that has seen more than a million new payroll jobs added to the national economy.

There was good news on just about every page of the April jobs report.  Employment gains for the month were widespread, with every major sector holding its own or showing an increase.  There were 123,000 net new A decade ago, a group of political advisors relentlessly preached the message to their candidate “it’s the economy, stupid.”  Now, in the midst of yet another political season, let me offer a small refinement of that advice.  That is, when it comes to the economy, GDP doesn’t matter.  It’s all about jobs.

The fact that some of you reading this might not follow what I just said is part of the problem.  Economists pore over every nuance of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s quarterly report on Gross Domestic Product in the national economy, because we recognize it as the most comprehensive scorecard on the performance of the national economy available.  But outside of our tiny profession, very few people even know what the letters GDP stand for, let alone know what it represents.

That situation is unlikely to ever change.  After all, the whole idea of adding up everything that is produced in the economy into a single number is the invention of economists, and it is produced by economists.  Is it any surprise that the only people who seem to pay it any attention are also economists?

Jobs are another matter entirely.  Counting heads in the nation’s workplaces is not only easier to 

understand, but it also has a direct connection with the economic welfare of the families and households getting the paychecks.  That’s why you get so many incredulous looks when you stand up in front of an audience and tell them that the recession of 2001 ended almost two and a half years ago.  Until the job counts in the economy turn upward, their faces tell you, it really doesn’t matter.

Happily, that day has finally arrived, for both the national and the state economies.  A few months of solid job gains, of course, won’t immediately erase the losses suffered during the course of the entire recession.  But it sure beats going in the other direction.

The U.S. economy added 288,000 payroll jobs in the month of April, coming off an upwardly revised 337,000 job gain in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The April gain caps a seven month streak that has seen more than a million new payroll jobs added to the national economy.

There was good news on just about every page of the April jobs report.  Employment gains for the month were widespread, with every major sector holding its own or showing an increase.  There were 123,000 net new professional services jobs created nationally last month.  Temporary help services, which often predict future permanent job swings, were up sharply.  And even long-suffering manufacturing payrolls registered a modest increase.

Now that job growth and GDP growth are moving in the same direction again, will we listen politely once again when economists tell us the economy is growing?  Perhaps.  But if you look at the actions of the Federal Reserve, it would appear that even some economists are paying more attention to job growth than GDP these days.

After all, the wise people at our central bank lowered interest rates twice after the official end of the recession, and have kept them at record low levels for nine quarters of very healthy growth in GDP.  During seven of those nine quarters, of course, job growth was heading in the wrong direction.

It’s heretical, of course, for an economist to question the dominance of GDP as a benchmark for judging economic performance.  But after two years of healthy GDP growth, why are we all breathing so much easier now that job growth has arrived as well?