Gov. Mike Easley was “touting” his record on job creation at a speech Monday in Elizabeth City. Just in the year 2003, he said, North Carolina had added 10,500 new jobs. When I saw this, I was puzzled ? because according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics North Carolina experienced a net job loss of about 15,000 positions from January 2003 to January 2004.

But then I realized that Easley was ?touting? his job-creation record, so it wouldn?t have been convenient to note that the state appears to have lost about 160,000 jobs ? or 180,000 jobs in the private sector, when you subtract government growth ? since he came into office in January 2001. So his choice of statistics was completely understandable, if the source was not.