BLS reports that while an additional 36,000 Americans lost their job in February, the unemployment rate remain the same. Here are the BLS reported facts:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.0 per- cent), adult women (8.0 percent), whites (8.8 percent), blacks (15.8 percent), Hispanics (12.4 percent), and teenagers (25.0 percent) showed little to no change in February. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not season- ally adjusted. . . .

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls declined by 0.1 hour to 33.8 hours in February. The manufacturing workweek for all employees dropped by 0.4 hour to 39.5 hours, and factory overtime decreased by 0.2 hour over the month.

As LEX notes in the FT,"Nervous Democrats must wish all 14.9m unemployed Americans could be hired to help with this year’s census. They are desperate for the US economy to add jobs."

So, it is the Census to the rescue. 600,000 workers were hired to count Americans in 2000. 1,200,000 million are being hired this in 2010 and they are well paid. They are to receive $20 an hour.

FT calls them Foot soldiers for Census Bureau to ease jobless rate:

“With the unemployment rate expected to be well above those witnessed during the previous census,” says the commerce department, “the effect of large changes in temporary 2010 census employment on the unemployment rate may be more noticeable in 2010.”

The hiring spree has recently elicited accusations of waste.

An audit last month from the commerce department’s inspector-general noted that thousands of workers hired last year for temporary posts by the Census Bureau were trained and paid but never worked for the agency. “

We believe this was due to the economic downturn and have adjusted our recruitment and retention projections,” said Malkia McLeod, spokeswoman.

Some say the unprecedented census mobilization is politically motivated – designed to maximize the count of Democratic-leaning poor and minority citizens and to create voting districts that artificially lean to the left. This perception was reinforced last year when the Obama administration announced that the Census Bureau would work directly with the White House.

Republicans quickly responded by calling the move a “political land grab”, contributing to the decision by Judd Gregg, a Republican senator, to withdraw his nomination as commerce secretary last February.

Mr Simore has just passed a 28-question exam, bringing him closer to what would be the best paid job he has ever had.

“For us, these jobs are like gold. Twenty dollars an hour guaranteed, it couldn’t come at a better time,” he says.

In short, these temporary"good paying" jobs are all the Democrats can do after continuing to create a level of economic uncertainty that is leading investors to horde their money instead of using it to create jobs.