Mitt Romney thinks his wife lacks "dignity"?

Mitt Romney said this past January that he thinks stay at home moms taking care of small children are lacking in dignity since they're not working real jobs.

Romney was talking about moms on welfare, but he might as well been talking about Martians, it doesn't matter - his point was that stay at home moms don't have real jobs, or at the very least their jobs aren't as good as the jobs of women working paid jobs in the workplace, and that stay at home moms don't have the same level of dignity of women who with paying jobs in the workplace.

Ouch.

What Mitt Romney said this past January is far worse than even the worst interpretation of what Hilary Rosen said this past week.

Hilary was questioning whether stay at home moms were intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the paying workplace. Mitt Romney was suggesting that women who stay at home taking care of their kids aren't working real jobs, and therefore don't have the dignity of women with "real" jobs.

Here's what Mitt Romney said, followed by the video.

"I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work... I want individuals to have the dignity of work."

In other words, if you're a mom at home taking care of a child two years of age, you're not "working," and you don't have "the dignity of work."

And here's the video via Chris Hayes, who unearthed the quote:

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Romney knows he's in trouble on this. You should read the convoluted answer non-answer he gave to the Huffington Post after he was confronted with his "dignity" quote from January.

I think Mitt Romney owes his wife, and every stay at home mom in the country, an apology for questioning their work and their dignity.

Not good econ figures, US added only 120,000 jobs last month

What sounded like good news a few days ago has turned out to be bad news. It's both under the number of incoming job seekers as well as well under the forecast.

U.S. payrolls rose far less than expected in March, keeping the door open for further monetary policy support from the Federal Reserve, even as the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, the smallest increase since October.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected nonfarm employment to increase 203,000 and the unemployment rate to hold at 8.3 percent.

As Roubini tweeted today, the only reason the unemployment rate looks like this is because the participation rate dropped. Many workers have stopped looking.

Job growth again in March

This early (and unofficial) report is more good news on the US economy. It has to get a lot better in order to help clear out the excessively high unemployment numbers. Unlike the consistently ugly numbers during the Bush years, this is once again both growth and above the number of incoming job seekers. Between the jobs growth numbers and the rising Dow numbers, Obama is not too bad for a socialist who hates business. CNBC:

The private sector created 209,000 jobs in March, continuing the slow but steady rise in employment that has characterized the employment market for months.

Services again led the job creation, according to a report from ADP and Macroeconomic Advisors.

The service sector increased 164,000 in March, though the rate of job creation slowed a big from the upwardly revised 183,000 in February.

Jobless in Spain hits record high

Sadly, there is very little good news out of Spain these days. The jobless numbers are horrid (again) and the unemployment is sitting at 23.6% and over 50% for the younger generation. Now that the new government has announced its strict austerity plan, times are bound to get tougher. BBC News:

The number of Spanish jobseekers rose for the eighth month in a row in March to hit a record 4.75 million.

The Labour Ministry said the number of people filing for unemployment benefits rose by 38,769 with the services sector seeing the most jobs lost.

The jobless rate in Spain stood at 23.6% in February, according to EU figures released on Monday.

Job market improving for college grads this year

This has to be a relief for many soon-to-be graduates and their parents. Even better than the higher volume of jobs is the news that the pay is up as well. It's still a tough market and there are some painfully high school loans to be paid, but how can you not like this if you're about to join the working world?

Employers expect to hire 10 percent more college graduates from the Class of 2012 than they did from last year's crop of grads, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

This marks the second consecutive year that employers have increased their hiring expectations from their initial outlook in the fall.

"Although employers haven’t revised their earlier projections significantly (up 0.5 percent), this upward movement along with other positive economic indicators show that the job market for new college graduates is improving steadily," said Marilyn Mackes, the executive director of the NACE.

Unemployment fell in 29 states in February

We need more and things are hardly settled, but really, this is positive news as we head into the weekend. CNNMoney:

Unemployment fell in 29 states in February and rose in only eight, the government reported Friday, in another sign of broad improvement in the U.S. labor market.

The improvement means there are only three states with unemployment above the 10% mark -- Nevada with a 12.3% unemployment rate, Rhode Island, which has 11% unemployment, and California, where unemployment stood at 10.9%.

North Carolina and Mississippi dropped out of the states with double-digit unemployment.

Romney recalls "humorous" story of his dad closing factory

What a knee-slapper. Who hasn't made jokes about shutting down a factory and leaving someone jobless? Get it? Families were on unemployment and had to struggle to get by. Hysterical! Life at the Romney mansion must be a laugh a minute as they cut down the 99%-ers who have to work for a living.

"One of (the) most humorous stories, I think, relates to my father. You may remember my father, George Romney, was president of an automobile company called American Motors," Romney said, according to audio of the call posted by ABC News and first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

"They had a factory in Michigan, and they had a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and another one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And as the president of the company he decided to close the factory in Michigan and move all the production to Wisconsin. Now, later he decided to run for governor of Michigan and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign," he said.

Romney laughed about the incident and about how it affected his dad, a three-term Michigan governor.

Gallup confirms that unemployed dropped again last month

What's even more important is that the under-employment rate is coming down as well. The numbers aren't earth shattering, but any improvement is positive news. Gallup:

The U.S. government will report its March unemployment rate on Friday, April 6. It will be based largely on mid-month reference week conditions. At 8.8%, Gallup's mid-March unadjusted unemployment rate is down by 0.3 points from 9.1% in February. This suggests that "real" unemployment decreased in March. Of course, Gallup's unadjusted rate in February was substantially higher than the government's unadjusted 8.7% rate.

The 0.3-percentage-point decline in mid-March moderates the 0.5-point increase Gallup found in February, but it still leaves the mid-month rate higher than the 8.6% in January. A year ago, Gallup recorded a similar decline in the March unemployment rate of 0.4 points, as it fell to 9.9% in March from 10.3% in February. The percentage of Americans working part time but wanting full-time work also declined in mid-March, to 9.8% from 10.0% in February. While the percentage of unemployed Americans is lower than it was a year ago, the percentage of Americans working part-time but seeking full-time work in mid-March is higher than the 9.2% of March 2011.

Note that Gallup's unemployment numbers for last month are higher than the US government's numbers. The explanation is complicated, but you can click through to Gallup's explanation. In any case, both the USG and Gallup both show unemployment dropped, which is good news.