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.
The MSM, Wall Street and the politicians in DC can peddle their economic propaganda until they’re blue in the face. But, real people, living in the real world, know they are being screwed, lied to, and thrown under the bus by an establishment strip mining the wealth of this country. The anger continues to build. Now get back to your new job at Burger King and enjoy this wonderful Obama economy.
What is the historical annual wage increase during a good economy?
Wip
A 3% to 4% annual growth is considered good. We’ve been at 2.5% or lower for the last 7 years.
You left one thing out. The sheeple are being told to get (in debt) and get a college degree.
That extra schooling should put the job seeker in prime position for the jobs being created.
Good grief.
Hmmm
Just to be fair in the interests of objectivity lets give credit where credit is due. This snowball actually started under Reagan, was nudged again by bush. But it was under Clinton that the ball was sent rolling down the hill. Bush Jr. stepped out of the way. And Mr. Obama has made sure it is going to hit the bottom. But make no mistake, it is ultimately the US Congress that must shoulder the responsibility for the destruction of our economy and along with it our standard of living and way of life.
Presidents come and go. On the other hand the old USSR politburo in the hay days of the cold war changed their members more often than the US Congress. The blame must rest with US Congress.
Admin.,
Purrrfect.
Strip mined and looted.
Read it again people:
The MSM, Wall Street and the politicians in DC can peddle their economic propaganda until they’re blue in the face. But, real people, living in the real world, know they are being screwed, lied to, and thrown under the bus by an establishment strip mining the wealth of this country. The anger continues to build. Now get back to your new job at Burger King and enjoy this wonderful Obama economy.
Wait till California’s new $15.00 minimum wage kicks in and it becomes law of the land.
Beautiful
If we needed further proof that the MSM is completely bought and paid for, this bit of news is it.
Literally NO major news source even begins to address our ailing economy. We are fed a steady line of bullshit while they trot out shitty candidate after shitty candidate for us to “vote” for, meanwhile the real movers and shakers of this company are looting us completely bare.
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The high-end jobs are for H1B visa people, Asians, affirmative action babies and token women.
The low-end jobs are for illegal immigrants and illiterate minorities.
If you are somewhere in between you are S.O.L. You can’t get a high end job because you aren’t a protected class. Then in desperation, you can’t get a low end job because the hiring manager either thinks you will quit, or will be a threat to their job.
Tumbleweed is right. I work in computers and networking (specifically communications) and I see the writing on the wall. I believe most of us in this industry do. Companies have gone from trying to be excellent, to trying to make the most profit while getting the people in place who will do an “Adequate” job.
I get headhunters hitting me up all the time talking about how “Great” my profile looks and how I would be a perfect fit. I can always stop them cold once I turn the conversation to salary. 20+ years of experience in the industry doesn’t come cheap, so they go overseas and hire in people who pass certification exams and put them to work.
I feel obligated to point out those overseas folks are the ones who call me when they can’t make something work.
High end jobs are going overseas of will be filled by visa holders. Period.
If only people could understand that as consumers, and not producers, we eventually run out of ways to consume (ie: money).
According to the same BLS report, 25,741,000 foreign-born workers were employed in the U.S. in March. This figure represents roughly 27.5% of the 93,482,000 not in the labor force.
Why One Economist Doesn’t Believe The March Jobs Number
By Andrew Zeitlin of SouthBay Research
March NFP 215K: Retail stick-save as Signs of Weakness Pick Up
A broadening Industrial recession was offset by solid service payrolls, led by Retail. Taken at face value, the breadth of growth signals a steady-as-she-goes economy.
But there are reasons to doubt the figures, starting with Retail. In the BLS model, retail is hitting a major growth spurt unlike anything seen in a decade. In the real economy, the Retail sector’s growth is slowing.
Also troubling is the continued contraction in temp worker payrolls. Sometimes that’s a sign of conversion of part-time workers to full-time workers, but that’s not what’s going on. Even one-offs like Personal Laundry (+5K) and Landscaping (+12K) couldn’t push Private Payrolls above 200K
Industrial Recession Broadens
SouthBay View coming into March: Energy sector cuts at slower pace, Manufacturing Cuts at faster pace
Actual: Energy sector (-12K), Manufacturing (-29K) compared with (-8K) in February
Key point: Payrolls dropped in almost every manufacturing sector, and machinery led the way (-6K). A strong sign that 2H Industrial production is poised to contract further as investments in factory production are dropping at a faster pace.
Retail Was Strongest Factor +48K: Dubious Achievement Award
BLS sees a Retail Renaissance
Despite a lackluster holiday sales season and massive big box store closures, despite major 1Q hiring companies like Home Depot reporting flat hiring plans, the BLS model reports 181K payrolls added in 1Q 2016.
To put that into context:
Best 1Q ever
Better than the entire annual Retail payroll growth for 2014; 2/3s the level of 2015
Fewer stores than ever, more big-box store closings, weak sales. And yet, most hiring ever. Hmmmmm…..
Job market booming as GDP collapses. Yeah right!!!
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March Jobs Report—–More Ridiculous Than Ever
by Jeffrey P. Snider • April 1, 2016
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoffs in the US were up 32% in March 2016 over March 2015. Compared to both January and February this year, March was somewhat better but overall for Q1 published layoffs were also 32% more on a year-over-year basis. It wasn’t a very good quarter. Some of that is expected given the death of “transitory” as an effect on oil production which can no longer deny reality. While it is easy to chalk up this potential economic setback to that particular sector, there is much more going on:
“Job cuts have slowed since surging in the first two months of the year, but the pace is still well above that of 2015,” Challenger, Gray & Christmas CEO John Challenger said in a statement. “And, it is not just the energy sector that is seeing heavier job cuts. Layoff announcements have increased significantly in the retail sector and computer sector as well.” [emphasis added]
A reduction in employment in retail makes sense given the overall environment, where the Commerce Department’s retail sales estimates remain below 3% (on a 6-month average basis) which has traditionally been the dividing line between retail employment expansion and the dreaded opposite. Other estimates of the retail climate wholeheartedly concur with the expectation for further labor reductions.
The BLS, however, shows just the opposite. In the latest payroll farce, the update for March 2016, employment in the retail industry was estimated to have grown by another astounding 47.7k employees (seasonally adjusted) after absolutely surging by more than 65k in each of the two months prior. In the six months since September, as retail sales have tumbled significantly below that 3% line, the BLS estimates that retail employment is up an enormous 261k jobs. That is a ridiculous 43.5k per month, which is just about three times the rate figured for the period starting August 2003 through August 2005 (15.8k per month) when retail sales were growing by an average 6%.
And the rest of the payroll report continues in the same manner, quite perfection on the surface with enormous and growing discrepancies (like the retail industry) underneath. The headline Establishment Survey number was +215k, right in line with estimates if slightly below the recent average. The Household Survey showed +246k while the labor force expanded by just about 400k, leading to the slight rise in the unemployment rate as those officially calculated as looking for work outnumbered somewhat those imputed as having found it.
The labor force growth was right on the monthly average of the past six months. That is the problem; such as an expansion is literally out of place for not just this cycle but the past three decades. The BLS estimates that again since September 2015, during some of the worst financial turmoil since 2008, a manufacturing recession and enormous uncertainties about the global economy, the labor force grew by 2.4 million.
The scale of that surge is unprecedented for these sorts of circumstances. The last time the labor force grew by the same amount (in percentage terms; omitting the discontinuity of January 2000) was July 1984. There is absolutely nothing about the economic climate of late 2015 and early 2016 that suggests even the smallest hint of 1984. That was in the midst of really the last actual recovery, where there was no need to go looking for it since it was obvious and evident everywhere – and not just in the statistics.
In absolute terms, it is the largest 6-month expansion in the data series going back to 1948 (again, setting aside January 2000). In cyclical terms, since October 2012 when the economy hit the full weight of the 2012 slowdown (which it has never pulled out of it) the labor force had grown only slightly. In the 35 months from that point until September 2015, the labor force is estimated to have increased by just 1.3mm, with more than 900k of those additions due to January 2015 alone (discontinuity?). In the 34 months not counting last January, the labor force was basically flat, having gained only 445k compared to 2.4mm in just the past six months?
Going back to the trough in the official labor force registered in December 2009, from there until September 2015 the labor force added just 3.75mm people and it took 69 months to “achieve” it. GDP was erratic but at least higher during those almost six years and there was no manufacturing recession or oil crash, but now that GDP looks scarcely 1% over these past six months (including the current GDPNow estimate of +0.6% for Q1 with all of its “residual seasonality” included to keep it barely positive) Americans are joining the labor force at an epic rate? It just doesn’t add up. None of the perfect employment report does, which isn’t any change for the past almost two years.
The jobs numbers just don’t suggest anything about anything else in the actual economy; they have been and look like they will continue to be irrelevant. There is, in my view, something very wrong with the statistics, and I think the timing gives it away. Unless someone is to seriously propose that “market turmoil” during these six months destroyed, as an example, something like day trading, forcing millions (2.4, to be specific) of possible day traders to have to suddenly look for work and join the labor force out of nowhere, then the labor force as well as retail sector surges only suggest improper statistical elevations. The same as the past two years or so, only now, like residual seasonality, amplified.
@Card802
Greetings,
I actually think it is a good idea for California to go to $15hr minimum wage – hell, they should do $20.
I say this because we need a solid example to show to the nation because, after all, it will be terrific. A colossal failure in the world’s 8th largest economy will show the folly of such things. On the other hand, if it somehow does manage to work then that, too, will show the way. Either way, California will be doing the nation a favor and as someone that lives in SoCal, I can give everyone updates from the bunker.
My wife is a Sous Chef at a four star hotel in Manhattan and last month her 5 day were cut to a 2 day work week.
@Card: You’ll need to wait until 2022 for that $15 minimum wage to kick in. By then a Big Mac will cost $15.
I understand that New York will follow the communists in Ca. and go to $15 Then other states will fall in line. After offshoring manufacturing jobs since the 70s and even tech sector jobs to India, etc.
It seems to be just a part of the process of the destruction of a once great country.
THanks to Uber anyone with a car is “self employed”
I posted a link to this article to a friend who appears to be a pretty smart guy. I wanted his opinion. There is no way for me to get up to speed on economics for me to form my own opinion on this subject. I read what I can from people I believe to be solid, but it’s only a belief based on the opinion of others who seem smart enough to know, and on and on… He’s not an economist, but someone who is constantly searching for qualified workers. I intend to garner what I can from any replies to this comment and reply to him. Also, I believe he’s out of touch with how things got this way. To name just two from my limited understanding: the international trade agreements that have outsourced all the working class jobs: GATT, NAFTA, TPP (which I hear may be on the rocks), etc,and the philosophical and political ideology of Globalism. He also fails to understand or is brainwashed into believing that there are no supranational forces manipulating everything and causing this massive destruction within the US. He seems totally immersed in The Agenda. Anyway, here’s his reply:
+++
I read the article. It fails to correctly account for the fact that a)more people are retiring than ever and b)the insanely wealthy don’t “work” . I get my news from my day-to-day reality. Look, if I didn’t have SO many job openings – https://www.epam.com/careers/job-listings?country=USA – like all of my competitors – I would think there’s an unemployment problem. Many of those jobs (perhaps most) pay 6 figures, are US based and have awesome benefits. But it’s not just skilled tech workers. The construction industry is struggling to hire. https://kimmel.com/employers/management/skilled-labor-shortage.html and so is pretty much every other industry that wants someone who bothered to actually get through high school and stay out of jail. Yes, white, male, high-school or less educated people are fucked, totally and forever, because unskilled labor is either being automated out of existence or competing with people who consider moving into an 8×10 room in a 5,000 person dorm with a shared bathroom per floor a huge step up in lifestyle. Bethlehem Steel, Crown Vantage – all of the places that hired people with a strong back and little or no educations – and paid them a living wage – are NEVER EVER coming back.
Job Listings
epam.com
An addendum from this same friend: OK read the article. … it’s just more Obama-bashing, which is a neurosis at this point, it’s not even clever. Secondly, it actually cites the core of the problem – low wages – without even ONCE mentioning that there’s plenty of money to go around – it’s just that trickle-down economics have not, do not and never will work. Y
raven
Your friend is a moron. Get better friends.
Can someone suggest, I’m embarrassed to say, a video or two (or author, who I can research), that this group believes provides a decent overview of the economic problems our country is facing and how they got that way. I feel a bit like Rodney Dangerfield in Back To School when he’s asked whether he’s read several classics of contemporary literature. His reply, “No, but I saw the movie.” 🙂
I’m not a young guy anymore unfortunately and don’t have time to pursue expertise in all the things that interest me. I’m also late to the game. Each day more “scales” fall off. It can be overwhelming. There are many links along the side of the page here, but where to begin??
Thanks for your patience.
David Stockman’s Great Deformation is a comprehensive assessment of how we got here.
Thanks Administrator. I’ll check it out!
Good friends are very hard to come by. I’ve had to kick many to the curb.
David Stockman: The Great Deformation – May 29, 2013
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Does no one in the media have even the slightest curiosity about this repeated claims of thousands upon thousands of new waiters and bartenders? I mean, my god, was there no place to eat or get a drink 7 years ago?
Here in central Massachusetts I don’t see any more restaurants and bars than there were back then. If anything there might be a very slight decline in their numbers. If you believed the BLS you might think you’ve got 3 waitresses handling every table and so many guys behind the bar that they’re tripping over each other. Bullshit.
Some people might say, “Oh, it’s all those waiters and bartenders getting cut down from 40 hours to 30 to get under an Obamacare threshold and now the restaurant has 4 waitresses working 30 hours instead of the 3 who were working 40. That may be a part of it but a ton of waiters, waitresses and bartenders were already working part time hours. It’s not as though they were all working 40 hours before this. And Obamacare was signed in March 2010. These jobs are just going from full time to part time now?
The American system is fundamentally rigged against native citizen workers – both in terms of regulatory burdens (obamacare; licensing rules; diversity driven discrimination) and competition from imported labor (H1, H2, EB5, illegals). Then add the growing impact of robotics and automation.
Employing a FTE with health benefits costs ~$20,000 per year just for the employer’s share of health insurance for a married employee with kids. Add the normal set of benefits, they cost 150% to 200% of that amount before they create a dollar of value. Figure $100,000 per year as the minimum cost to a business to have any FTE employee with benefits. There is no incentive at all for companies to create any jobs — the incentives are for replacing employees with automation, hiring illegals under the table, hiring part-time employees for 29 or fewer hours (no benefits), and/or importing H1 slaves (who are forced to work extreme levels of overtime, who are paid substantially lower than native employees, and who will be deported immediately if fired).
Jobs Report Blues
Paul Craig Roberts
On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 215,000 new jobs in March.
John Williams of ShadowStats.com reports that these “new jobs” result from the the Birth-Death model that “artificially inflates headline month-to-month payroll gains with add-factors that currently average well in excess of 200,000 jobs per month.”
In other words, the jobs are the product of a model’s assumption that unreported new start-ups created 200,000 more jobs than unreported business failures lost.
To look at the jobs report in a different way, assume March did bring 215,000 new jobs and ask, “which sectors had jobs gains?” The answer is the same as has been the case since I began years ago reporting on the payroll jobs report:
Retail trade accounts for 47,700 of the jobs.
Health care and social assistance account for 44,000 of the jobs.
Waitresses and bartenders account for 24,800 of the jobs.
Manufacturing lost 29,000 jobs.
Part-time jobs without benefits comprise a rising percentage of US employment.
In the 21st century the main source of corporate profits has been lower labor costs achieved by offshoring US jobs and by bringing in lower-paid foreigners on work visas. This practice stopped the growth of US real median family income. Federal Reserve policy kept consumer demand alive by expanding consumer credit, which substituted a rise in consumer indebtedness for the missing growth in consumer income. Today the growth of consumer credit is limited by the absence of income growth to service the debt.
In short, corporations maximized short-run profits by ruining their domestic consumer market along with the personal income and sales tax base for government. It is unclear that this extraordinary mistake can be unwound.
When despression, desperation and destitute become you, man contend that you will find the Terrorist within.
When Depression, Desperation, and Destitute define you, many contend that you will find the Terrorist within.