The unemployment rate of 4.x percent is an outright lie. BIG excerpt from the economic collapse blog:
This is exactly what we have been expecting to happen. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy only added 38,000 jobs in May. This was way below the 158,000 jobs that analysts were projecting, and it is also way below what is needed just to keep up with population growth. In addition, the number of jobs created in April was revised down by 37,000 and the number of jobs created in March was revised down by 22,000. This was the worst jobs report in almost six years, and the consensus on Wall Street is that it was an unmitigated disaster.
The funny thing is that the Obama administration says that the unemployment rate actually went down last month. Almost every month since Obama has been in the White House, large numbers of Americans that have been unemployed for a very long time are shifted from the “unemployment” category to the “not in the labor force” category. This has resulted in a steadily falling “unemployment rate” even though the percentage of the population that is actually working has not changed very much at all since the depths of the last recession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the number of Americans “not in the labor force” increased by 664,000 from April to May. If you believe that, I have a giant bridge on the west coast that I would like to sell you. The labor force participation rate is now down to 62.6, and it is hovering just above a 38 year low.
When you add the number of working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” (7.4 million) to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” (an all-time record high of 94.7 million), you get a grand total of 102.1 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.
This is not a game.
So far in 2016, three members of my own extended family have lost their jobs.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoffs at major firms are running 24 percent higher up to this point in 2016 than they were during the same time period in 2015.
It was only a matter of time before those layoffs started showing up in the official employment numbers, and I fully expect that this trend will accelerate in the months ahead.
And here are some other brand new numbers for you to consider…
-Since Barack Obama entered the White House, 14,179,000 Americans have “left the labor force” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
-The quality of our jobs continues to deteriorate. In May, 59,000 full-time jobs were lost, but 118,000 part-time jobs were gained.
-Since September 2014, 207,000 mining jobs have been lost.
-We just learned that U.S. factory orders have declined once again. This marks the 18th month in a row that this has taken place, and we have never seen such an extended decline outside of a major recession.
-JPMorgan’s “recession indicators” have just soared to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.
Karl Denninger at the market-ticker blog says:
The unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 4.7 percent in May, and nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+38,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care. Mining continued to lose jobs, and employment in information decreased due to a strike.
Uh huh.
Not seasonally adjusted (that is, before book-cooking for political purposes and attempting to bludgeon The Fed) out of the household survey) the figures are a different matter.
Employed in the household survey went from 151,075 (thousands) to 151,594, an increase of 519,000.
Oh, and the employment:population ratio went up by two ticks to 59.9%!
So you expect me to believe that the economy created basically zero jobs when the household survey says it was over 500,000 and the employment:population rate went up two full ticks?
I’ll tell you what is terrible though. Part time for economic reason workers were up sharply, 467,000, nearly back to levels from a year ago and reversing a lot of progress. Meanwhile the number of part-time workers who were intentionally working part-time went down by 572,000. Hmmmm…..
The workweek remained stable at 34.4 (gee, Obamacare anyone?) as did overtime hours while average hourly earnings ticked up five cents.
But I’m supposed to believe that headline number.
Riiiiight.
Send the guy with the handcuffs over to the Bureau of Lies and Scams please.
PS: Bite me Cramer.
Obama and by extension obamacare have been disastrous for this country. It is only going to get worse unless things are resolved quickly AND correctly.