They just raised the minimum wage in California from like $6.25 to $8.50... Thats gonna hurt a lot of businesses (30% wage increase.) And now we are suppesed to expect the amount of jobs to go up based on that? Definately not... BUT Government officials do have the ability to "create jobs." Just one example: Gov. Official, Mrs. A, pitches a project to create low income housing in Cityville. She gets her funding from a number of places: donations, business investors, and government funding. So there ends up being $2 million to go into this project... to pay for materials, labor, planning, etc. These are all jobs that weren't there last year, hence "jobs have been created." Just remember, this is just 1 scenario I made up in a few seconds, imagine how often this actually happens. If Kerry budgets things the right way, he could get those numbers published. And actually, a lot of telemarketing and phone tech support is being moved to India and the Middle East.