So the February Jobs Report is out, and it’s about as positive as one can reasonably expect. Net new jobs were up by 295,000, well over expectations, and making it twelve straight months of job gains exceeding 200,000. The official unemployment rate–as I always note, the number most Americans focus on–dropped to 5.5%. Pretty much every other indicator–notably workforce participation and wages–was more or less flat, which isn’t necessarily good news in itself but will be ammunition for those discouraging the Fed from hiking interest rates in the very immediate future.

You can expect Republicans either to ignore this report, or to pursue their latest strategem of focusing strictly on workforce participation numbers and arguing that Obama has expanded the welfare state so much that people feel no particular compunction to work. It’s total hooey, but that’s how they keep finding the gradually filling glass still mostly empty.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.