However, The King of Simple isn’t all that overjoyed, because like usual, the main stream media reports what they are given; government statistics.

And, you know what they say about statistics; Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ─ Aaron Levenstein

So taking the cue once more and being a half empty glass sort of guy, shall we look at the other half of the statistics? The U.S. doesn’t add jobs fluidly to our economy; jobs are added at a disproportionately higher rate in spring and summer.

In April, Manufacturing employment fell by 46,000 over the month; nearly all the decline occurred in durable goods manufacturing. While manufacturing is in my opinion the most important of our economic indicators, it should also be added that all previous recessions and depressions were preceded by a drop in durable goods manufacturing.

As a little recap of an article that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the problem is not that we lost 270,000 jobs in the last four months; the problem is that on average, we should have added 180,000 jobs per month…just to stay even with job seekers!

In other words, the total jobs added should have been around 900,000 not 270,000 jobs lost. Put these two numbers together and you have 1,170,000 people who aren’t’ one bit happy. Okay, Wall Street is happy, but no honest people are.

It gets worse. As I recently reported, some 5 Million people are going to graduate from college, high school, trade schools or have dropped out of the education system and will be looking for work…next month.

Will they be reported as unemployed? Well of course not; they were not previously employed and can’t draw unemployment, which is the source of the data for jobless claims.

Construction alone gave up 61,000 jobs in April, with losses continuing throughout most of the sector. Since its peak in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 457,000 and counting.

So there you have it, the rest of the story except for the part about where all of these people will eventually get jobs and you’ll have to ask your government about that. They will be in charge of job losses until such time that we tell them that they aren’t.

In the mean time, the inflation game is being played to the hilt. To give a vivid example of what part inflation has had on the last 28 years of our economy, let’s take a look at fuel.

In 1980, super unleaded gasoline was about 90 cents per gallon and adjusted for inflation, it was still 90 cents per gallon. In April of 2008, super unleaded gasoline is $3.80 per gallon and adjusted for inflation is about a $1.00. To put this another way, If you were making $10.00 per hour in 1980 and are making $40.00 per hour today…you‘re even with inflation.

When is enough, enough? We have millions of older Americans on fixed incomes who are in jeopardy of not being able to afford basic necessities. The TV and newspapers are full of reverse mortgage ads aimed at takeing advantage of this dire situation by buying these people’s homes at bargain prices.