Don't get me wrong, I'm as happy as Charles to rub each new positive jobs report in the nose of Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans, whose sole electoral strategy seems to be to cross their fingers that the economy will stagnate or worsen, and then hope that voters forget whose policies got us into this mess in the first place. But when it comes to employment, I follow some awfully bearish economists who have tended to discount the upward trend we've seen in recent reports.

Well, not this month. Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has been about as gloom-and-doomy on jobs as they come, actually seems to crack a smile for the first time in forever:

The revisions actually improved the picture more than may be apparent, since a quirky 42,200 rise in courier jobs for December was completely eliminated in the revision. Instead, the revised data show a 63,000 increase in jobs in professional and technical services for December, instead of the 12,000 previously reported. This was largely due to more jobs in employment services, which reportedly rose by 21,800 in December and by 33,200 last month. This is the sort of healthy job growth in this sector that often precedes more permanent hires.

[...] The January report is undoubtedly one of the best reports that we have seen since the recession began.

Of course, the larger picture still sucks. This was not only the steepest post World War II recession in terms of job loss, as this chart dramatically shows, it's also been by far the slowest in terms of job recovery. But with jobs up strongly in key areas like manufacturing, and unemployment down sharply for blacks and hispanics (though still almost double the rate for whites), the latest data has at last convinced Baker and some other bearish economists that we may finally be on a "somewhat stronger job growth path."

And that, as Charles astutely gloats, would be bad news for Romney.