Beware Presidential Happy Talk on Unemployment

Before you get all excited and spend the money you've been rat-holing for the past several months, don't let today's slightly -- and I would emphasize very slightly -- improved jobless numbers allow you to be blinded to the ongoing truth of where we are.

Layoffs in April were at 539,000. While that's less than analysts were predicting (620,000), it's still a lot of people without work.

Worse, March numbers were revised upward to 700,000.

Worser, the unemployment rate went from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent. People aren't finding new jobs. Businesses, for various reasons, aren't planning on hiring. Also, remember that Government Motors (GM) is planning on idling most of its production for 9 to 11 weeks this summer. Chrysler is also shutting down.

Worst, the federal government is going to make things harder for business in the very near future. Nearly every significant piece of legislation or proposed regulatory rule is going to act as disincentive for business, particularly small business, to go and grow. So when you read ...

"Although we have a long way to go before we can put this recession behind us, the gears of our economic engine do seem to be slowly turning once again," President Barack Obama said Friday hours after the employment report was released.

... just remember that there is only so much that presidential "happy talk" can do to lift the numbers.

A spokesman for UBS Financial Services told CNBC today that he thinks the numbers are being cooked.

"The job numbers are suspect," Cashin said. "You have revisions that came out, with March being up to 700,000. And you have the census hires. The government is hiring people to take the census and that makes the numbers suspect."

I don't know whether these new census workers are being paid yet, and how much, but if the government is considering them part of the work force, then the UBS guy may be right.