'Experts' Claim 2M Jobs Created in August: I'm Skeptical 45 comments
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There are/were 2.5 million lay-offs in the U.S. in August, the total of the weekly lay-offs for this month. With another jobs report due out next Friday, the U.S. propaganda-machine is already brainwashing the markets and the American people to put their faith in a number with no basis in reality.
If we take the 2.5 million lay-offs, and subtract the “estimated” net job-losses for August – 235,000 jobs – this means the “experts” cited by Bloomberg (in its weekly propaganda report) are predicting that the U.S. economy created 2.265 million jobs in August.
At a time when these same “experts” state that the U.S. economy is in its worst crisis “since the Great Depression”, they expect us to believe that the U.S. economy is creating more new jobs every month than at any other time this decade.
The numbers were virtually the same for July: 2.5 million lay-offs, supposedly only 250,000 jobs lost – directly implying the creation of well over 2 million jobs in July. The lies were only slightly smaller in May and June.
Historically, when weekly lay-offs exceed 300,000 per week (for a total of roughly 1.3 million for a month), the U.S. economy begins to shed jobs on a net basis. This basic arithmetic means that each time the U.S. economy heads into a downturn, it is unable to produce more than 1.2 million new positions per month.
Given these historical ratios between lay-offs and job-losses, how can anyone possibly believe that with the U.S. experiencing its worst economic collapse in at least 70 years that the U.S. economy is (supposedly) creating twice as many jobs as during a normal downturn??
Bear in mind that the same “experts” who are trying to get us to believe their obviously fraudulent numbers have already told Americans to expect a “job-less recovery”. In other words, we are supposed to believe that during this collapse the U.S. economy is creating twice as many jobs as during a normal downturn, but once the “recovery” starts, the economy will then produce far fewer jobs.
This is obviously utter nonsense.
As regular readers know, I have written (ad nauseum) on this issue previously (see “U.S. economy to lose 20 MILLION jobs this year”). However, for newer readers, I will provide some more-realistic numbers to work with.
To begin with, we know that roughly 18 months ago the U.S. economy was producing only about 1.2 million new positions per month. This is the total number of implied new jobs created when we subtract net, monthly job losses from total lay-offs.
Since that point in time, the U.S. economy has obviously gotten much, much weaker. The unprecedented drop in state and federal government tax revenues do not lie. Much lower tax revenues mean many fewer employed people paying taxes.
Thus, we can deduce through basic logic that the U.S. economy is producing far less than 1.2 million new positions per month. My own best “guesstimate” is that the U.S. economy is producing (at the most) 750,000 new positions per month. When we subtract 750,000 new positions from 2.5 million lay-offs for the month, we are left with a net job-loss of 1.75 million jobs for the month of August (and virtually identical numbers for July).
This is why I continue to state that the monthly job reports produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are not simply very poor “estimates”, made in good faith – but, rather, deliberately falsified reports, where there is no possibility of rationalizing their numbers with the real world.
When the actual job losses are approximately 600% more than the official estimate (and this same error is repeated month after month after month), what we are obviously witnessing is nothing more than a crude attempt at brainwashing.
Early this year I predicted the U.S. economy would lose 20 million jobs this year, and with the year now 2/3 gone, I see absolutely no reason to adjust that estimate at all.
For those who wish to separate fact from fiction, I suggest completely ignoring the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and focusing entirely on the weekly lay-offs number. As long as these lay-offs continue to total more than 2 million per month, it is a mathematical certainty that the U.S. economy is losing at least 1 million jobs per month – and likely far more than that.
In the improbable event that we do actually see some sort of “economic recovery”, then the weekly lay-offs would have to fall to little more than half their current total. Unless/until that happens, the U.S. labor market will continue to shed jobs at this Great Depression-like rate.
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Much of the "stimulus" money is being funneled into "American" multinationals that continue to slash and burn American workers, yet hire in Asia and Mexico.
The upcoming Cash for Clunking appliances is a perfect example when you find out that Whirlpool announced ANOTHER US plant closure in Indiana and the to-be-expected "new" factory in Mexico.
GM is spending $200+ million to build a plant in China, to sell trucks in China. So much for our upcoming Cap & Trade scam working for the environment. GM also took $1 BILLION of Bailout 1.0 to send to South America to build plants there.
On Aug 31 10:40 AM Michael Clark wrote:
> Perhaps these government-created jobs are also being shipped to Asia
> and India. Hell, it's one world. I guess it doesn't matter where
> the jobs we create go. That's what Big Business has been doing for
> years. Creating foreign jobs from the profits they make in America.
Let's say the labor market is 150 million. You are saying that 50 million have lost their jobs. Okay, 30% of the population works for the government- 50 Million. So you’re saying 50% of the population that works in the private sector (if you think the private sector represents 100 million jobs) have lost their jobs?
Not every business in THIS country is going out of business or has downsized to the degree that 50% of the private sector is no longer working.
The US recession/depression started in Dec of 2007. It has gone on for nearly two years. Even in the depression there were intermediate periods of growth. Things don't go up or down in straight lines. A long term trend can be a straight line, yes- like the depression, but there can be "ups" within a downward trend. There has not been the historical perspective to see what that trend is yet. Now, you can guess and hypothesis but until the future becomes the past you do not know what the duration is or what the over all trend was. What we do know for certain is that the recession started in Dec of 2007. What we do not know is where the future lies. We can try and predict and many try to do that- many are often wrong few are right the few that are right.
For example, a company might put hourlies on "flex" time essentially making a portion of them "part time" employees. When things start to come back they might bring them back to full time. So the growth in new hires is then exponential- as is the employees earning power and their ability to spend- which most likely has been augmented by unemployment insurance. This makes the recovery strong and the statistics are skewed when observed on a short term basis and muted on a long term basis hence the long term trend line. It takes a long term upward trend to reverse a short term, like a recession as severe as this one, downward trend.
M. Clark predicted that there would be a turn around in 2019? I have no idea, there are so many variables that can effect a situation that it seems impossible to make such a certain prediction a decade from today.
My guess is that you Jeff believe that things will continue to get worse. I don't know? Could they- maybe. It's like speculating on oil. Could there be a hurricane- sure. Could there be a war with Iran- who knows. Could Somalia pirates capture every ship- sure. It's called chaos theory. Is it a basis for long term investment-no. Is there going to be a “summer driving season”- yes. Is there going to be a “winter driving season”- yes. Do people travel to see relatives over the holidays- yes. Should the price of Oil go up on all of these events- speculators think so. Does it fuel a market for dumb money- yes. Is it a basis to propagate and propagandize BS sure- this post of your is a great example of that.
On Aug 31 11:35 AM Jeff Nielson wrote:
> CautiousInvestor, I wish I could link to several comments at once.
> As Doubleguns pointed out, none of us have data on the "underground
> economy" - all the under-the-table workers who have lost their jobs.
>
>
> As Sbenard points out, the BLS is using (abusing) "seasonal adjustments"
> to totally warp its monthly number - and no one even mentioned the
> absurd "birth/death model" (not even me).
>
> As for the BLS numbers you use, both the "hires" and "terminations"
> number are well above any POSSIBLE numbers from the real world.<br/>
>
> Annualized, you're talking about 50 million terminations and 40 million
> hires in ONE year - despite the fact that the TOTAL U.S. labour market
> isn't much above 150 million.
>
> I question any statistical relevance of those numbers, given they
> have no connection to the real world. Indeed, this is obviously the
> OBJECTIVE: create a methodology which is so heavily contrived that
> it's extremely difficult to get any idea of what is happening in
> the real world.
I am not an apologist for the Bureau but, as I said earlier, I'm inclined to believe the BLS data is on the whole representative of what is taking place in the US economy and presently and hiring is plaguing our economy though terminations still exceed to hirings.
And as mentioned earlier, hirings do not equal job creation; people retire and are replaced, people quit and are replaced and sometimes new jobs are created. These monthly numbers sound very high and they cannot be treated cumulatively because they fail to reveal the underlying churn and turnover in the labor market. People are constantly quitting jobs and finding new ones; imbedded within the monthly numbers is labor market churn.
It is estimated that our turnover rate is somewhere around 20% or perhaps higher; taking this to be the case and the labor market to be 150M, you would expect annual turnover.....expressed in hirings and terminations....to be around 30M. And this is just churn and ignores all of the other dynamics within the market including additions, hirings, terminations and retirements. Layer on this and you easily get to 40M to 50M.
Company A hires a new hire from company C and now we have another new hire. He is really a replacement for company A but the statistics count him as a new hire. If company C hires a replacement his is also counted as a new hire.
We have just created 3 new hires from this situation. Its all BS.
I have to do the new hires there is no block for replacement. Just new hire. I have always laughed at the obsurdity of this.
The process/paperwork is set up to deceive. I don't know who is being fooled.
It's the changes in the workforce. If someone can't find a job and gives up looking, they get sucked into the Black Hole and not counted as part of the workforce.
If a small business owner closes their doors and can't find suitable alternative sources of employment, the Black Hole sucks them in. Gone, vanished, they don't count.
If an person voluntarily leaves their job, they don't even hear that sucking sound before it hits. They no longer exist according to BLS statistics because nothing nor nobody in the Black Hole counts as part of the workforce.
I could go on with examples for a long time, but you get the picture. The point is, if the drop in the workforce is greater than the increase in the new claims, unemployment will drop, too. Isn't that amazing?
The methodology used by BLS is outdated and irrelevant. It is too easily manipulated to portray the desired outcome that it is no longer funny. I wish you could see me now because I am definitely not laughing.
doubleguns, you may have stumbled upon a truly valid indicator of the state of the economy in the "undercover cash" sector of drugs, prostitution, and the like. It would be quite fascinating to be able to have enough data to form a valid metric here.
The numbers you refer to are from someone who COMMENTED here - and have nothing to do with me OR the commentary above. And if you had actually READ that comment, you would have seen that I REJECTED those numbers as being unrealistic.
This is yet another example of you being either unwilling or incapable of addressing what I'm actually saying. Instead, you fly off to your own little world - and launch attacks which have absolutely no relevance.
The "weekly layoffs" statistic is from initial unemployment claims. To quote the last guy who schooled you on this “This is not the same thing as job destruction, because, among other things, (1) some of the jobs are eliminated by attrition and buyouts rather than layoffs, (2) some people who lose jobs are not eligible for unemployment insurance; and (3) some people who leave jobs don't become unemployed but choose alternative activities such as school or family. The unemployment claims data are not directly comparable to the payroll employment data, so you can't just subtract one from the other to get the number of new jobs being created.”
But Jeff this isn’t the first time you have miss-extrapolated or masturbated numbers to push some “ruin America buy gold” strategy is it? No you do it almost all the time.
As for being a “moron” how’s that gold trade been working out for you?
And as for following, most of the time I actually don't comment it's just when your pushing your agenda by using factious numbers or using numbers incorrectly to support your fantastical delusions created behind you computer while sitting in your zubba's watching hockey out of one eye dreaming about the demise of the world and how valuable your little bucket of gold sitting in your closet is going to be.
The hilarious part about you using numbers from BLS or anyother info is you then say "it's totally erronoius". Well then get your own godamn numbers and prove to sombody other than your shinny enormous forehead as to why and what emperical data went into them to make them more authentic.
Since our economy is *not* a galaxy, I propose that we are creating a "massive black hole" which will, at some point, begin ejecting massive amounts of energy and "particles".
The effects of this I am not going to predict - I'm too ignorant. But I do expect to see it and its effects should be spectacular.
If I were a betting man, I would think that we'll see the first effects next election cycle.
HardToLove
On Aug 31 01:02 PM Mark Bern wrote:
> BLS has created a "Black Hole" (seekingalpha.com/symbo...)
> that they can stuff anyone into that they'd rather not count as unemployed.
> What is this Black Hole? I'm glad I asked.
>
> It's the changes in the workforce. If someone can't find a job and
> gives up looking, they get sucked into the Black Hole and not counted
> as part of the workforce.
>
> If a small business owner closes their doors and can't find suitable
> alternative sources of employment, the Black Hole sucks them in.
> Gone, vanished, they don't count.
>
> If an person voluntarily leaves their job, they don't even hear that
> sucking sound before it hits. They no longer exist according to
> BLS statistics because nothing nor nobody in the Black Hole counts
> as part of the workforce.
>
> I could go on with examples for a long time, but you get the picture.
> The point is, if the drop in the workforce is greater than the increase
> in the new claims, unemployment will drop, too. Isn't that amazing?
>
>
> The methodology used by BLS is outdated and irrelevant. It is too
> easily manipulated to portray the desired outcome that it is no longer
> funny. I wish you could see me now because I am definitely not laughing.
I love the fact you take yourself so seriously. Do you self a favor lighten up on your gold exposure and enjoy life...You missed a great run in equities.
On Aug 31 03:21 AM Dave Wrixon wrote:
> I must admit I gave up trying to do any quantitative analysis a long
> time ago.
"Not only are you a moron, but totally lacking in integrity.
Instead of replying to what I said about yet another deliberate attempt by you to grossly misrepresent what I said, you run off on another totally irrelevant tangent - which again has absolutely no connection to what I wrote in my commentary.
As a further demonstration of your complete absence of integrity, you ALSO refused to comment on WHY you continue to be one of my "followers" - despite your rabid hostility.
In FACT, the only reason why you choose to be my "follower" is so you can STALK me all over this site - and launch your infantile personal attacks not only on my own commentaries, but ALSO when I make comments on other peoples' writing.
If you actually have ANYTHING worthwhile to say, why don't you write your OWN commentaries?"
The first part I think I addressed by putting into context your constant "marketing" of gold on SA, by simply asking "how is that gold trade working for you?" I mean whose the "moron"-your words nor mine- there? As for "integrity" WTF? Integrity would be publishing numbers that are accurately reported. Integrity would be not distortng/masterbating those numbers so suit your self-glorifying drivel. Instead of shovelling integrity you are shovelling crap.
No one misinterpreted what you said it's you who constantly and consistently misinterprets data.
I addressed the "follow" issue that you have. It's so that when I see you distorting data, making wild claims of "conspiracy" and the rest there is someone holding your "commentary" which you so self righteously think is "so important" to task.
It is not my job nor my inclination to write "commentaries". I do not portend to be a "commentator" nor do most on this site who have opinions. That is the essence of this site. If people who disagree with you are to be shot down for calling out your erroneous data, facts off of which you make rhetorical proclamations to propagate your gold "book".
Now, as for infantile- I can see how that maybe perceived as such from your point of view and that is fine. But in a poorly "rhetorical" sense the idea of calling someone a "Moron" or even that their opinions are "infantile" is that not "infantile" in itself.
Could it not be argued that all of your counter arguments, personal attacks, and claims of "irrelevancy" be applied to yours as well?
If so what does that say about your stature as a self proclaimed "commentator".
Good for you Jeff you became a "commentator" on SA! Hurray!! You’re a success!
How's that gold trade working?
They can make the number look better by not ading jobs but subtracting working population one way or another through decreased births, deaths, uninterested marginal workers, etc. Where there is a will there is a way. Failing that, the government can always employ a 100k workers to work for a week like census workers, etc. After all they are the ones with the free bag of money they got from the taxpayers credit card. Beggar thy neigbor and children politics has got to end.
rasmussenreports.c...
www.rasmussenreports.com/
HardToLove
On Sep 01 08:01 PM doubleguns wrote:
> OG the links not working. Please retry when you get back here.