Tag Archives: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Another Fraudulent Jobs Report

Financial Markets, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, ,

“Willing suspension of disbelief” is defined as a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.  First off, I want to state upfront that there’s nothing enjoyable about the monthly non-farm payroll report unless you enjoy being subjected to brain damage.

Each month the Government asks us to suspend our critical faculties and accept the headline-reported number of new jobs created by the economy as well as the unemployment rate.   Once again the Government did not disappoint, as it headline-flashed the alleged creation of 211,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.4%.

Unfortunately, for the mindless masses who consume fast-food style news from mainstream news sources, once the headline numbers are absorbed and the “experts” reaffirm them with their idiotic psycho-babble, the numbers as reported miraculously become The Numbers.

To say that the latest non-farm payroll report stretches the ability to suspend one’s disbelief is an understatement.  The Government wants us to believe that 211,000 new jobs were created in April – “seasonally adjusted,” of course.    A cursory glance reveals that 162,000 working age civilians decided to just leave the labor force, which explains the alleged decline in the unemployment rate.  Either those folks who walked away were bequeathed with Social Security disability, took out a big student loan and enrolled for an online degree program at one of the many online universities or, most likely, their jobless benefits expired and they simply gave up looking for a job that pays more than minimum wage (Note:  the latter explanation is supported by the recent spike up in auto loan, credit card and mortgage delinquency rates).

As for the 211k alleged jobs created…The Government appears to have generated those jobs via its “create-a-job” program otherwise known as the “birth/death model.”  The birth/death model assumes that every month new businesses are created and terminated. New businesses hire employees and terminated businesses fire employees.  You can read more about it here:  birth/death modelling technique.   The b/d sausage grinder for April produced 255,000 new jobs, before seasonal adjustments (note:  most people assume the 255k jobs were the actual number of jobs added into the headline count, but the 255k is run through the “seasonally adjusted” total jobs blender and folded into the final number).

On the surface, the Government wants us suspend our disbelief and buy into the assumption that significantly more new businesses were started in April than were shuttered.  Unfortunately, according to the Census Bureau’s own numbers, new business creation is at a 40-year low.  In other words, the number of jobs that can be accounted for in the 211k headline number by the b/d model were never really created.  In fact, judging from the estimated 8,640 retail stores to be closed in 2017, added to the 10 retail chains that have already closed down this year, it’s more likely that more jobs were lost by deaths than were created by start-ups.    Yet, here’s the Government’s b/d estimate for retailing:

As you can see, the Government credits the retail industry with creating 5,000 new jobs in April from new business start-ups. But look at the leisure/hospitality category. It shows 84,000 jobs created by that sector. Again, suspension of disbelief is impossible when you consider that the restaurant industry alone is shedding jobs on a “net” basis, as private data sources show that restaurant sales have declined in 11 of the last 12 months (LINK). In fact, the restaurant industry is experiencing its worst period of sales since 2009.  I could go through each line item and annihilate the report, but for the sake of time  I would urge the Government to take a closer look at its assumptions underlying the b/d model job creation calculus.

John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has been presenting the Conference Board Help Wanted Online Index (HWOL).  This  is the online transformation of a data series that measures help-wanted advertising going back to 1919.  This series has accurately correlated with every economic recessionary period in the post-WW1 era.  The graph presented by Williams in his latest newsletter shows that the HWOL index peaked in mid-2010 and has been declining ever since – both total HWOL ads and new HWOL ads.  Rate of year over year growth for the metric went negative in 2016, suggesting that the economy has not only not produced jobs since the beginning of 2016 but has in fact lost jobs.   The rate of decline in HWOL advertising  currently is contracting at a 20% year over year rate.  The last time it was contracting at this rate was in 2008.

Without question, it can be shown even with cursory analysis that the Government’s monthly non-farm payroll is fraudulent, serving no purpose than other than for political propaganda.  Looked  at another way, if the true unemployment rate was truly 4.4%, not only would the Fed be raising interest rates at a rapid pace, but it would also be shrinking its balance sheet in order to remove the threat of an accelerating rate of inflation stimulated by an acute labor shortage (4.4% is well below the economically defined long-run 5% natural rate of unemployment).

Precious Metals Are Ripping Higher As The Government Jobs Report Loses All Credibility

Financial Markets, Gold, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , ,

The Government’s non-farm payroll report announced the creation of 242,000 news jobs in February. When the numbers hit the newswires, the Fed trading algos triggered a 12 point spike up in the S&P 500 futures and a $14 cliff dive in Comex gold futures.

The Government’s propagandized economic reporting has deteriorated into nothing more than an epic insult to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. Beyond that, the reports are nothing more than a source of embarrassment for the “experts” who gather on the financial networks to dissect and analyze the numbers for the purpose of “baptizing” the report.

But once the momentum from the Fed’s intervention had subsided, the SPX futures quickly retreated into a loss for the day and gold spiked up as much as $20.  The response to the Fed’s “invisible hand” in the market reflects the fact that these blatantly rigged Government-produced economic reports have lost all credibility with the market’s smart money:

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Gold and silver this week have traded in complete defiance of Wall Street’s “siren call” for a big price correction. The Goldman Sachs analyst, Jeff Currie, incessantly insists on embarrassing himself with a forecast of $800 for Wall Street’s Pet Rock. Contacts at Goldman told me he was instructed under no uncertain terms wipe some of the rotten egg off his face and get on CNBC to raise his target to $1000.

The behavior of gold this past week reflects an increasing loss of credibility in not just Government economic reports, but also a deteriorating faith in the fiat nature of the U.S. dollar. How can anyone place any faith in a Government which is comprised of nothing but thieves have any “credit” to back its currency?  As it stands now, the U.S. dollar is backed by a technically bankrupt Government run by corrupt politicians who serve as well-paid human puppets for the banking and corporate interests who control them.

On an interesting note, it was reported today that is suspending issuance of new shares in its physical gold ETF (ticker: IAU) due to a shortage of registered shares: LINK.  This is highly misleading because market makers can borrow shares and short them to buyers. Currently there’s only 2.4 million shares short in IAU out of 635 million shares issued. That’s only .3% of the float, which means there’s 10’s of millions of shares available to borrow and short in order to satiate buyer demand.  Compare this to GLD, which has 4.5% of the float shorted right now.

The real reason Blackrock had to suspend issuance of shares is because it is seeing something in the physical market that is stopping the firm from creating new share “baskets” which require the procurement of physical gold to back those “baskets.”  The best bet is that Blackrock knows it will ultimately be unable to buy enough physical gold on a timely basis to back the registration of new shares if called upon to do so.   In other words, there is a short of Pet Rocks.

Gold and silver are moving higher because all signs indicate that the markets are broken and the Government is beginning to lose control over the system.   The flow of capital out of paper assets and in to physical gold and silver is further evidence that the Government, Wall Street and the financial markets are both quickly losing credibility.

There’s No BS Like The BLS

Financial Markets, Gold, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , ,

The employment report isn’t worth discussing, quite frankly.  We already know ad nauseum that the report is completely fabricated and, perhaps, only reflects a modicum of what is really happening in the U.S. labor market.  That is, the report shows that most of the employment “gains” are occurring in the part-time segment of the labor force, while full-time jobs continue to disappear.

The only purpose served by dissecting the report is to “legitimize” the number as if those are the numbers we should be discussing.  The talking heads and economic “experts” in the financial media look like complete idiots when they engage in passionate discourse about a “tight labor market” and an “improving employment situation.”  It’s beyond absurd.

Furthermore, we already know that the labor force participation rate continues to decline into oblivion.  Again, it’s become obvious over the last several years that the U.S. economy is quickly approaching the point at which more than one-third of the population is not even considered to be part of the “workforce.”  That fact is starting to put me to sleep – and perhaps that’s the goal of these Government manipulated economic reports.

But one area of the report did catch my eye.  According to Government data-collectors and statisticians, the number of workers over the age of 55 surged to an all-time high, while the number of workers in the 25-54 age bucket plunged by 131k.  Even if that latter number not the real number, it certainly reflects some sort of statistical reality.  In fact, I would bet the real number is even bigger.   This fact becomes obvious when you walk into any retail big box stores and grocery stores – not just Costco or Home Depot – and you see AARP members performing menial tasks like greeting and thanking customers, collecting grocery baskets and even bagging merchandise.  The Social Security set is being forced back to work and its crowding out the prime segment of the workforce who might otherwise take those jobs or who don’t take them because they don’t pay enough.

The only reason I bring this up is because – for any of you who remember – Obama gave a speech about a year ago in which he asserted that the rapid decline in the labor force participation rate was caused by people over the age of 55 taking early retirement.

Either Obama is a psychopathic liar or he is a complete idiot who merely serves the purpose of reading the propaganda that scrolls in front of his eyeballs on the teleprompter.  I suspect it’s a combination of the two factors.

I suspect I was not the only person at the time who pointed out this incongruity, because I have not heard that particular propaganda soundbyte coming from the Obama Government since Obama expelled that large brown piece of fecal matter from his mouth.