Jobs in April

I will caveat this post, as I usually do, that the official employment report from BLS is based on survey data with low response rates and frequently shows substantial revisions to prior months’ data.  I keep reporting on all this various economic data because we are being lied to about the state of the US economy.  It is anything but healthy, totally propped up by ongoing huge deficit spending, which leads to inflation and higher interest rates that crush low-income people.  And eventually the reckoning will harm everyone.  This month’s report showed that jobs growth was 175,000 versus an estimate of 240,000.  S0meone screwed up and released something closer to the real number instead of a made-up one that would only be revised lower in subsequent months.

The business establishment survey, which produces this estimated increase, only did so because a bizarre model attempting to account for the opening of new businesses and closure of existing ones, found that 363,000 jobs came out of this “model”.  Otherwise, the math says there would be a loss of jobs.   And the household survey continues to report far fewer people working than does the business survey, only 25,000 new jobs according to it.  The unemployment rate rose to 3.9%.  As usual, much of the growth in jobs is due to part-time jobs and we have lots of people striving to make ends meet by working multiple jobs.  (BLS Report)