The Bureau of Lying (Labor) Statistics issued the September employment report today. (BLS Report) It found a new way to manipulate the data to create a strong job market. This time it made up a bunch of government jobs. The headline says we added 254,000 jobs and July and August had small revisions upward. Recall that there are two surveys used for this report and the headline reports often commingle them. And remember that there are lots of adjustments to the raw data; adjustments which are often head-scratching. The survey of employers showed 223,000 new private jobs and 32,000 new government jobs–on an ADJUSTED basis. Unadjusted there were 918,000 new government jobs and a loss of 458,000 private jobs.
According to the other survey–of households–on an ADJUSTED basis there were 133 new private sector jobs and 785,000 government ones. The government job rise is the biggest growth on record and not due to seasonal adjustments, as you might expect with school starting. Unadjusted, the household survey showed 1.3 million new government jobs and a loss of 275,000 private ones. Because of these absurd, and obviously fake, numbers, instead of unemployment, which is calculated using the household survey, being 4.5%, it is 4.1%. Aside from this blatant fraud, one other item to note, multiple jobholders rose, another sign of very stretched consumers.
This report backed off on the addition of foreign-born workers, i.e. illegal immigrants and the number of new part-time jobs, probably because those topics got some unwanted attention in recent weeks. And the other important thing to note is that wages continue to rise a fast and faster than expected clip, feeding inflation. And all those government jobs, if they are real, just mean more government spending and debt and even more inflation. But my money is on this being pure political bullshit put out the Bidementia administration to help Harris. (ZH Post)
