On Thursday, May 12th, the New York Times ran an editorial that said Capitol Hill was overjoyed with reports that 274,000 new jobs had been reported in April. A few days before that the Washington Post reported that Washington was ga-ga over income tax receipts that exceeded expectations.

All of this is probably true. The Monthly Treasury Statement that came out on Wednesday, May 11th, reported income tax receipts for April at $$148 billion when last year, April of fiscal 2004, these receipts were only $103 billion. That’s a $45 billion increase this April. American taxpayers paid more this year and there hasn’t been an income tax increase. Something good must be happening, right?

And there may really have been 274,000 new jobs added in April, but what sort of jobs were these?

The best, most immediate and most direct indication of what’s happening in the job market is the continuing report of surplus money America ’s workers and their employers keep giving the government month after month. Payroll taxes that deliver as soon as a worker's next paycheck. And this is not reflecting good news.

According to the Treasury’s Monthly Statement, the Social Security surplus for April is below last year:

The only rational explanation for this, especially if there was an increase in the workforce during April, is that there are a lot of people working for less than people worked for last year.

And last year was not a good year either. Overall payroll tax surpluses for our supplemental retirement system dropped to $71 billion from $82 billion garnered in fiscal 2003. A steady decline from $89 billion in fiscal 2002 and $98.7 billion in fiscal 2001, the first year of the Bush administration. Could this be why the Beltway Bandits want to “fix” Social Security? They’re not getting enough surplus money to steal.

It’s an indisputable fact that pay scales have dropped down. And if Americans are paying more in income taxes, then they are paying more while working for less – unless it’s only the fat cats that have paid more in income taxes after fairing so well with the tax cuts Bush passed before 9/11.