Why Bother Looking at the Jobs Reports?

Another month, another revised jobs report from the Bureau of Lying Statistics.  The original expectations for January were 185,000 jobs.  The BLS made up a number of 353,000 in its inital report.  And now of course, when we get the February report today, that number is revised down to 229,000, or by 35%.  December was revised down again as well.  How do you miss a major statistic that badly?  And if you are going to miss it routinely, like every month, why bother to put it out, just wait, have a two months lag but at least be more accurate.  Even the mainstream media is beginning to notice this trend and wonder what the heck is going on.  I can answer that, the Bidementia puppet masters are telling BLS to make up and report a big initial number and then later try to get accurate.

And then there is February’s number which was reported at 275,000 versus 198,000 expectations.  So it really is likely that the February number was actually closer to that expectations level.  The unemployment rate jumped to 3.9% but given that everything it is based on is likely phony, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.  The survey of companies and the survey of households continue to diverge, with the household survey showing an actual loss of jobs.  The two surveys have the biggest gap in history.  Labor force participation is troubling, at 62.5% of working age adults.  We have a lot of slackers living of all the government freebies and not enough people working and paying taxes.

If you believe the numbers, a lot of the growth was in health care and social assistance, largely driven by government spending, and government itself.  In the real world where people make things that actually may improve living standards, not so much gain.  According to the household data, full time job holders have declined, while part-time and multiple job-holders have grown.  I literally don’t know what to believe and you look for alternative sources of good data and it is hard to find.    (BLS Release and files)   (ZH Post)

And another interesting data point is that despite extremely high credit card interest rates, balances on those cards are growing rapidly and so are delinquencies.  Consumers are using debt to keep spending up in the face of ongoing inflation, but with those very high balances and interest rates, they are having trouble making payments.  This can only last for so long and meanwhile the savings rate is decreasing, leaving consumers with even less resources if things get harder.  (ZH Post)