Cyclone! The Fed/Obama Labor Recovery In 5 Charts (And They Are Ugly!)

Guest Post by Anthony Sanders

Both outgoing President Obama and lingering Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen are making claims about the number of jobs added under their leadership.

Yellen: “Job market strong, signs of wage growth.” And the “strongest job market in nearly a decade.”

Obama (during his farewell press conference last Friday): “Since I signed Obamacare into law, our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs,”

Sounds impressive, unless you look closely at the numbers.

First, about the 15 million new jobs added since Obama signed Obamacare into law. The black box in the chart below shows the real average hourly wages since 2010 (through 2014). They were declining.

declining-wages

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.

The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.

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Almost all the US jobs created since 2005 are temporary

Via Quartz

The conventional full-time job is disappearing.

Survey research conducted by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” jumped from 10.7% to 15.8%. Alternative work is characterized by being temporary or unsteady—such as work as an independent contractor or through a temporary help agency.

“We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.

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Since 2014 The US Has Added 520,000 Waiters And Bartenders And Lost 13,000 Manufacturing Workers

Obama economy in full swing. Vote Hillary for more of the same. 
Tyler Durden's picture

As another month passes, the great schism inside the American labor force get wider. We are referring to the unprecedented divergence between the total number of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and minimum-wage food service and drinking places jobs, aka waiters and bartenders. In August, according to the BLS, while the number of people employed by “food services and drinking places” rose by another 34,000, the US workforce lost another 14,000 manufacturing workers.

The chart below puts this in context: since 2014, the US had added 523,000 waiters and bartenders, and has lost 13,000 manufacturing workers.

 

While we would be the first to congraulte the new American waiter and bartender class, something does not smell quite right. On one hand, there has been a spike in recent restaurant bankruptcies or mass closures (Logan’s, Fox and Hound, Bob Evans), which has failed to reflect in the government report. However, what we find more suspect, is that according to the BLS’ seasonally adjusted “data”, starting in March of 2010 and continuing through August of 2016, there has been just one month in which restaurant workers lost jobs, and alternatively, jobs for waiters and bartenders have increased in 77 out of the past 78 months.

We are curious what this “data” series will look like after it is revised by the BLS shortly after the NBER declares the official start of the next recession.

Do You Want Fries With That?

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Over half of U.S. jobs created this year are in Food or Retail

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Employment Situation report, summing up the most recent government figures on employment in the United States. Investors use this information to gauge the health of the domestic economy, paying close attention to the unemployment rate, nonfarm payrolls, labor force participation, and wage growth.

While this report gets dissected to death each month, we thought we’d take a more nuanced view by profiling the two sectors that have supplied the lion’s share of job growth in 2016 so far.

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CUTTING THROUGH BLS BULLSHIT

The BLS just reported their monthly seasonally adjusted, birth death adjusted, bullshit guess of employment, designed to keep the sheeple in the dark. Amazingly, it wasn’t too bad or too good. The MSM says it was just right. The ongoing mantra is the job market has been strong and growing for years. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have money to spend. Maybe it’s the 2.3% annual wage increases when their living expenses go up by 5% or more.

Here are a few data points you won’t see on CNBC:

  • The establishment survey says 215,000 jobs were added in March. The good old birth death adjustment threw 65,000 new phantom jobs into that calculation for all the new small businesses opening up. Anyone with half a brain knows there have been more small businesses closing than opening for the last 4 years. The plus 65,000 is more likely minus 65,000. That would change the headline. Wouldn’t it?
  • The household survey shows 246,000 more people employed. What you won’t hear on CNBC is that it also shows 151,000 more people unemployed. It seems 206,000 people who were supposedly not in the labor force in February are suddenly back in. I thought the MSM said it was Boomers retiring creating the surge in people not in the labor force. I guess that was another false storyline.
  • Now for the good stuff. Table A-9 reveals the true health of this booming employment market. Of the 246,000 newly employed Americans, very few of the jobs were good paying secure positions, with benefits.
  • The number of self-employed people jumped by 194,000. So, selling shit on Ebay and Amway sales are propelling the job surge. Sounds promising.
  • The number of multiple job holders surged by 127,000 in March. So, Americans need to work two $7.50 an hour Obama jobs to make ends meet. This is truly a sign of a booming jobs market.
  • The number of employed men between the ages of 35 and 54 (prime earning years for men) dropped by 76,000 in March. It is lower than it was in January. When there are less bread winners working, the jobs recovery mantra is a fraud.
  • In a sure sign of a strong growing productive economy, 29,000 more manufacturing jobs disappeared for good. I’m sure China and Vietnam  appreciate the new manufacturing jobs sent their way.

  • At least the 26,000 newly unemployed, formerly well paid Americans, were able to get a waiter job at TGI Fridays, as the number of waiters and bartenders jumped by another 25,000. Our transition from a savings based producing society into a debt based consumption society is nearly complete. Thank you Obama.

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LIES, DAMNED LIES & STATISTICS

The government released their monthly CPI report this week. Even though it came in at an annualized rate of 3.6%, they and their mouthpieces in the corporate mainstream media dutifully downplayed the uptrend. They can’t let the plebs know the truth. That might upend their economic recovery storyline and put a crimp into their artificial free money, zero interest rate, stock market rally. If they were to admit inflation is rising, the Fed would be forced to raise rates. That is unacceptable in our rigged .01% economy. There are banker bonuses, CEO stock options, corporate stock buyback earnings per share goals and captured politician elections at stake.

The corporate MSM immediately shifted the focus to the annual CPI figure of 0.1%. That’s right. Your government keepers expect you to believe the prices you pay to live your everyday life have been essentially flat in the last year. Anyone who lives in the real world, not the BLS Bizarro world of models, seasonal adjustments, hedonic adjustments, and substitution adjustments, knows this is a lie. The original concept of CPI was to measure the true cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. It should reflect your true inflation of out of pocket costs to live a daily existence in this country.

Instead, it has become a manipulated statistic using academic theories as a cover to systematically under-report the true level of inflation. The purpose has been to cut annual cost of living adjustments to Social Security and other government benefits, while over-estimating the true level of GDP. Artificially low inflation figures allow the mega-corporations who control the country to keep wage increases to workers low. Under-reporting the true level of inflation also allows the Federal Reserve to keep their discount rate far lower than it would be in an honest free market. The Wall Street banks, who own and control the Federal Reserve, are free to charge 18% on credit card balances while paying .25% to savers. The manipulation of the CPI benefits the vested interests, impoverishes the masses, and slowly but surely contributes to the destruction of our economic system.

A deep dive into Table 2 from the BLS reveals some truth and uncovers more lies. Their weighting of everyday living expenditures is warped and purposefully misleading. Let’s look at the annual increases in some food items we might consume in the course of a month, living in this empire of lies:

  • Ground Beef – 10.1%
  • Roast Beef – 11.8%
  • Steak – 11.1%
  • Eggs – 21.8%
  • Chicken – 3.7%
  • Coffee – 3.4%
  • Sugar – 4.2%
  • Candy – 4.6%
  • Snacks – 3.5%
  • Salt & Seasonings – 5.3%
  • Food Away From Home – 3.0%

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