Latest Jobs Data: The Worst Expansion in 30 Years Continues

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Mises:

Latest Jobs Data: The Worst Expansion in 30 Years Continues

 

22 HOURS AGO Ryan McMaken

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new employment data, with the BLS reporting 225,000 new jobs created, according to the Establishment Survey. A survey of economists by Bloomberg had predicted an increase of 180,000 jobs, so this report beats expectations. The press, not surprisingly, is gushing over the good economic news.

 

To get a better sense of the jobs situation in context, though, we need to look beyond the headline data and delve more deeply into what the BLS is reporting.

 

Moreover, it's important to look beyond the government seasonal adjustments which can be employed to massage the numbers even more than the usually-employed methods.

 

So, a look at the non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate shows an unemployment rate of 5.1 percent for July 2016. That's compared to 5.6 percent for last year.

 

There's a little bit of an improvement there, but the unemployment rate is a function of both the number of people who say they're in the labor force, and the number of people who say they want jobs and have them.

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Manipulation: The Phony Job Recovery

19 HOURS AGO Ron Paul

Last Friday saw the release of a bombshell jobs report, with headlines exclaiming that the US economy added over 250,000 jobs in July, far in excess of any forecasts. The reality was far more grim. Those “jobs” weren't actually created by businesses – they were created by the statisticians who compiled the numbers, through the process of “seasonal adjustment.” That's a bit of statistical magic that the government likes to pull out of its hat when the real data isn't very flattering. It's done with GDP, it's done with job numbers, and similar manipulation is done with government inflation figures to keep them lower than actual price increases. In reality there are a million fewer people with jobs this month than last month, but the magic of seasonal adjustment turns that into a gain of 255,000.

 

 

Delving further into the jobs report, we see that many of the jobs that were supposedly created were jobs in government and health care. Government jobs, of course, are paid for by siphoning money away from taxpayers. And health care jobs are increasingly created solely because of the ever-growing mandates of Obamacare.

https://mises.org/blog/manipulation-phony-job-recovery