If we cannot trust what
the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and
the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government's statement
last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during
October?
Apparently not. After
examining the government's report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the
jobs were "phantom jobs" created by "concurrent seasonal factor adjustments."
In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying
data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the
BLS.
As usual, the financial
press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by
the government.
The relevant information,
the information that you need to know, is that the level of payroll employment
today is below the level of 10 years ago. A smaller number of Americans are
employed right now than were employed a decade ago.
Think about what that
means. We have had a decade of work-force growth from youngsters reaching
working age and from immigration, legal and illegal, but there
are
fewer jobs available to accommodate a decade of work-force entrants than before
the decade began.
During two years from
December 2007-December 2009, the US economy lost 8,363,000 jobs, according
to the payroll jobs data. As of October 2010, payroll jobs purportedly have
increased by 874,000, an insufficient amount to keep up with labor force growth.
However, John Williams reports that 874,000 is an overestimate of jobs
as a
result of the faulty "birth-death model," which overestimates new business
start-ups during recessions and underestimates business failures. Williams says
that the next benchmark revision due out next February will show a reduction in current
employment by almost 600,000 jobs. This assumes, of course, that the BLS does
not gimmick the benchmark revision. If Williams is correct, it is more evidence
that the hyped recovery is non-existent.
Discounting the war
production shutdown at the end of World War II, which was not a
recession in the usual sense, Williams reports that "the current annual
decline [in employment] remains the worst since the Great Depression, and should
deepen further."
In short, there is no
employment data, and none in the works, unless gimmicked, that supports the
recovery myth. The US rate of unemployment, if measured according to the
methodology used in 1980, is 22.5%. Even the government's broader measure of
unemployment stands at 17%. The 9.6% reported rate is a concocted measure that
does
not include discouraged workers who have been unable to find a job after 6
months and workers who who want full time jobs but can only find part-time
work.
Another fact that is
seldom, if ever, reported, is that the payroll jobs data reports the number of
jobs, not the number of people with jobs. Some people hold two jobs;
thus, the payroll report does not give the number of employed
people.
The BLS household survey
measures the number of people with jobs. The same October that reported 151,000
new payroll jobs reported, according to the household survey, a loss of 330,000
jobs.
The American working class
has been destroyed. The American middle class is in its final stages of
destruction. Soon the bottom rungs of the rich themselves will be
destroyed.
The entire way through
this process, the government will lie and the media will
lie.
The United States of
America has become the country of the Big Lie. Those who facilitate government
and corporate lies are well rewarded, but anyone who tells any truth or
expresses an impermissible opinion is excoriated and driven
away.
But we "have freedom and
democracy." We are the virtuous, indispensable nation, the salt of the earth --
the light unto the world.
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