Obama: Jobs Destroyer
Phantom numbers substitute for real ones.
by Stephen Lendman
Phantom numbers conceal dire conditions. Reports are manipulated to distort reality. Last year's data overstated about half a million jobs.
Seasonal adjustments turn reality on its head. So does the so-called "birth-death model." It estimates net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from others no longer operating.
During current economic hard times, it magically creates nonexistent jobs. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admits misreporting, saying:
"The confidence level for the monthly change in total employment is on the order of plus or minus 430,000 jobs."
Mark Twain's maxim about lies, damn lies and statistics perhaps applies mostly to government managed news misinformation. What matters most is concealed.
Claiming economic conditions are sound when real unemployment is 23% is one of the worst damn lies. Bipartisan complicity to destroy America's social contract when it's most needed shows total disregard for vital needs.
It proves government officials are enemies, not allies. Labor market reality reflects it. Monthly jobs reports are more trick than treat. Nearly 25 million Americans remain jobless. Low-pay/poor benefit part-time or temp ones replace full-time ones.
Each fall and winter well above trend job gains are reported. Every spring and summer, they're reversed and then some. Hundreds of thousands of previously reported jobs vanish.
They never existed in the first place. Phantom numbers replace real ones. Official ones are statistical illusions. Obama is more jobs destroyer than creator.
The latest jobs report underwhelmed. Economist David Rosenberg said "classic measures of employment dispersion or breadth receded significantly."
He asked how can growth be sound when 212,000 part-time jobs replaced full-time ones for "economic reasons."
"And the broadest measure of unemployment remains stuck at a depression-like 14.4%." For the past four years, long-term unemployment practically doubled to nearly five million.
I'll take years to undo the damage. It'll never be undone if destructive policies substitute for constructive ones.
