Reuters reports:

U.S. factory activity rocketed to its fastest pace since 1983 in November and construction spending hit another record high the prior month, according to reports on Monday....

How staggering is this? So staggering that American manufacturers actually hired a few people:

With growth so strong and new orders still flooding in, factories hired workers for the first time in 37 months, according to the survey....

That good news comes means government data to be released on Friday could show an even bigger rise in November payrolls than the 135,000 gain forecast by economists, after an increase of 126,000 in October.

Wow! Maybe next month, if we have the sharpest increase in manufacturing since the dawn of time, U.S. firms will actually hire enough workers to create something resembling prosperity. (As the Economic Policy Institute points out, the economy has to create 150,000 jobs a month merely to keep up with the growth in working-age population.)

As for how all this jibes with the Bush administration's economic track record prior to the current wave of upbeat news, the EPI says:

Since the recession began 31 months ago in March 2001, 2.4 million jobs have disappeared, a 1.8% contraction. This is the first time since the Great Depression that jobs have failed to fully recover within 31 months of the start of a recession....

Even with job gains of 306,000 a month, as promised by the Administration early this year, it would take more than four years to close the jobs gap that two and a half years of job losses have created.