Retailers had worse sales in November than expected — because of Sandy. The economy isn’t doing as well as experts thought it would — because of Sandy. New home sales were weaker than first reported — because of Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy, of course, was a mighty disaster. But it is a godsend to anyone who needs an excuse. Didn’t do your term paper? Blame Sandy. Missed a credit-card payment? It’s Sandy’s fault.

Hell, I’m going to plead emotional distress — because of Sandy — the next time I get a traffic ticket, forget to hold open a door or jaywalk.

So you can now expect any company, especially those selling or doing anything on the East Coast, to blame the infamous hurricane. This will go on for months. Sandy is like spackle: it covers a whole lot of mistakes.

If you want to entertain yourself for a few seconds, put the words “because of Sandy” into a Google search, and you’ll see that everything from blood drives to restaurants to pay phones to college application deadlines were affected by the storm.

I mention this because the Labor Department will announce its employment numbers this Friday. They aren’t supposed to be very good — only 90,000 new jobs compared with the 171,000 jobs that magically appeared just a few days before the presidential election.

As I’ve mentioned before, the last two employment reports were unusually — and suspiciously — strong. A person with a skeptical mind might think this was because the Democrats needed good economic reports to hold power.

President Obama will be in office for another four years, and there is now no real reason to prove statistically that the economy is stronger than it really is. In fact, with the current fiscal-cliff talks, it might be better for the administration to show economic weakness so that the Republicans are forced to negotiate.

Besides, if Friday’s number is less than the 90,000 expected, or the unemployment rate goes higher than the anticipated 8 percent (from 7.9 percent), Sandy will be blamed.

I have a prediction: a lot of newborns in 2013 will be named — you guessed it — Sandy because of Sandy.

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In my last column, I wrote about pedophiles posting their filth on Facebook.

But this isn’t just Facebook’s problem.

Companies that advertise on the site are going to be humiliated someday when their ads run alongside sexually explicit images of children. And this is a format problem that only a complete overhaul of Facebook’s design will solve.

As it now stands, the advertisements that come up on a Facebook user’s screen are meant entirely for that user. What I mean is, if a person’s Facebook profile says he has a family, the ads will reflect that with, for instance, lots of insurance and financial-services companies.

It doesn’t matter what the Facebook user is looking at on the left part of his screen. Those ads come up automatically on the right side.

So when The Post’s computer technician and I were investigating the disturbing photos the other day, we saw a stack of ads for MasterCard, Dunkin’ Donuts, State Farm Insurance, the state of Arizona, a game called “Battle Pirates” and Kim Crawford Wine on the same screen.

I wonder what those companies would think if they knew.

*

Wall Street may care about Friday’s jobs report, but the thing that really matters on Main Street is income statistics.

Here are some:

According to the Federal Reserve, real median household income was up just 1.2 percent in October from this year’s low of $50,757 in April. The current $51,089 income level is slightly above what it was at the end of last year.

Median income was $54,761 in October 2007.

So, you see the problem?

Well, you really don’t get the whole sense from those numbers. Besides this drop-off in income, households are also getting hurt on their investments.

Sure, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up nicely this year, and the Dow Jones industrial index has some gain. But people aren’t likely to cash in stocks — and have to record a gain or loss on taxes — when they want to make a purchase.

They are more likely, in my experience, to look at their bank accounts, see interest income and spend the money that their money has made. But interest income is so puny these days because rates are being held at historic lows by the Fed.

Bottom line: Households are not only earning less at work but also getting less return on their savings. Add to that the possibility of higher taxes at the end of the year, and you can probably can see why the economy is in a perpetual state of blah.

The only states in which consumers should be feeling any better are those where marijuana has been legalized.

My favorite joke of the week is Obama asking for an end to the US debt ceiling. With the Fed already having created $3 trillion in an alternate currency to buy its quantitative-easing bonds, the idea of also giving Washington a blank check on spending is pretty hilarious.

I wonder how hard our kids will be laughing 10 or 20 years from now when they endure the 1920s German experience of having to cart wheelbarrows full of currency to the supermarket.