In many previous commentaries I have lamented the fact that the “statistics” produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are now so severely doctored as to have lost almost any relevance or analytical value. With mere “exaggerations” we can at least estimate points of reference and then proceed with analysis. However, the fabrications produced by the BLS have severed virtually any connection to the real world.
Where we can still find some small analytical value in these numbers is to compare the differences in the BLS’ (revised) aggregate numbers with the “headline” lies it has been dispensing each month. Unfortunately, the revised aggregate numbers only provide us with data up to the end of 2010, however we can still reach some interesting conclusions based upon the available numbers.
The U.S. propaganda-machine tells us that the “Great Recession” ended in March 2009, while the BLS has been reporting monthly “job gains” in nearly every report since that time. As a matter of simple arithmetic, if the U.S. economy began adding jobs in the Spring of 2009 (and the job losses had supposedly eased in the months immediately prior to that), then when we looked at the total number of employed workers in the U.S. (as calculated by the same BLS) we should have seen the year-over-year numbers turn positive no later than the end of 2009.
This is not what the BLS’ own data indicates. In its own “Comparison of All Employees” (seasonally adjusted) we see that December of 2009 marked the absolute bottom for total employment in the U.S. In other words, during the first eight months of “job creation” during this supposed “economic recovery” the U.S. economy lost more jobs on a net basis.
By the summer of 2010, the Obama regime was bragging that it had “created or saved” over 3 million jobs – based largely upon the fraudulent monthly “non-farm payrolls” reports of the BLS. Yet by the end of 2010 we see that total employment in the U.S. had inched upward by a mere 1 million jobs from the absolute low.
Note that this feeble level of “job creation” is less than half the amount of new jobs needed just to keep up with population growth. In other words, throughout this mythical “recovery” U.S. unemployment has worsened (proportionately) month-after-month. Keep in mind that by itself population growth will always generate more jobs. New additions to the population mean more “mouths” to feed, more people who need clothes, housing, and an endless assortment of consumer goods.
Obviously population growth alone could have accounted for that entire, paltry one million jobs. This means that despite the largest “stimulus package” in the history of the world, and more than $10 trillion in additional Fed “credit” and hand-outs to Wall Street that the U.S. economy has generated nothing in terms of jobs – and in fact has lost ground due to the population growth which has occurred over that period.
Of course the BLS isn’t the only propaganda-mouthpiece boasting about “job creation”. The Federal Reserve itself likes to make grandiose claims about fantasy-jobs which never existed. New Fed-head Janet Yellen claims that Fed money-printing (by itself) will have “created 3 million jobs” by the end of 2012. And critics of this piece will argue that (supposed) job-creation has been “even stronger” in 2011 than in 2010.
The reality here is that the “stronger growth” in jobs this year is 100% accounted for the bigger lies the BLS has been adding with its thoroughly discredited “birth/death model”. Who has “discredited” the birth/death model? The BLS itself.
Over the last few years, the BLS has added roughly 1 million “phantom jobs” per year via its birth/death calculation. And then after each of those years it “revises” its calculation (using real data) and then subtracts all of those jobs. It is the BLS itself which has calculated that none of these “birth/death” jobs ever existed.
This year, if we subtract the 600,000+ phantom-jobs added by the birth/death model since January, we see virtually all of the supposed “new jobs” vanish. And keep in mind that all of the numbers from this year will be “revised” again (lower), just as the BLS has been doing every year.
Thus, as we near the mid-point of 2011, here is the reality of the U.S. economy – minus the lies of the BLS. At best, since the U.S. “Great Recession” supposedly ended the U.S. economy has added roughly 1 million new jobs: less than one new job for every eight lost-jobs which have (officially) been recorded since the U.S. economy crashed. And those jobs were generated not by real “economic growth”, but simply due to a swelling population.
In terms of the “unemployment rate”, the numbers are unequivocal: the percentage of employable Americans who are without jobs continues to go up every month – due to the combined effect of the still extremely high weekly lay-offs, plus the fact that the number of “new jobs” doesn’t come close to even matching the growth in population.
We’ve already been through this charade in the U.S. housing market. Again we were told by countless media talking-heads and “experts” (on countless occasions) that the U.S. housing market had “bottomed” in 2009. These shills even had the audacity to claim there was a “recovery” taking place in the U.S. housing market – as opposed to merely a “dead-cat bounce” after the worst real estate crash in the history of the U.S. economy. Returning to the real world, we have now seen U.S. housing prices plunge through that supposed “bottom”, meaning that even the propagandists have been forced to abandon their lie about a “recovery” in this sector of the economy.
We are about to reach the same point with the U.S. jobs market. After two years of lying about “gains” of phantom-jobs, even the propagandists themselves are now talking about the “jobs market stalling”. The fraudulent BLS monthly report released today claimed that the U.S. economy added an anemic 54,000 jobs. Buried beneath the “headline”, the BLS quietly added over 200,000 mythical birth-death jobs. What this means is that even when we add in all of the other statistical deceptions which the BLS uses in falsifying these reports (such as bogus “seasonal adjustments”) that without the birth/death lie the U.S. economy would have lost 150,000 jobs in May.
Obviously there was never more than a tiny trickle of job-creation in the U.S. during this pretend-recovery. Obviously the U.S. economy is again losing jobs on a monthly basis. And we arrive at this conclusion just as the last of the Obama “stimulus” dollars are being spent and with the Federal Reserve again pretending that it is about to “end” its own gravy-train of $trillions in “free money” (for Wall Street).
Meanwhile, brain-dead Republicans in Washington are flexing their muscles and talking about “slashing spending”. One has to wonder whether any of these ‘Einsteins’ are familiar with the word “suicide”?
The situation is now very clear with the U.S. economy. If Washington politicians follow through on their promise/threat to subtract from current spending levels, the anemic U.S. economy will completely implode – and as revenues collapse even from today’s extremely depressed levels, the U.S. is facing a Soviet Union-style disintegration in less than two years. Given that the most extreme/reckless “stimulus” in the history of the world did nothing but allow the U.S. economy to “tread water”, removing all that stimulus from this still-crippled economy can only result in catastrophe.
The other scenario is equally bleak. With the U.S. economy even weaker than when it first crashed in 2007, and much more bloated with debt, it would require a significantly more extreme “stimulus” program just to allow the U.S. economy to avoid collapse. Actual “economic growth” is now a mathematical impossibility.
With the U.S dollar already teetering on an historic collapse when the market thought that the Fed would “end” its reckless money-printing, should it instead ramp-up this currency-dilution even faster, the only possible result is the collapse of the U.S. dollar (and the hyperinflation this directly implies).
The cheap parlor tricks of this “smoke and mirrors” economy have run their course. The 10’s of millions of Americans without jobs will soon become 10’s of millions without food, if state Republicans follow through on their plans to slash unemployment benefits, pension benefits, and health-care benefits.
If they don’t follow through on these misguided threats, and simply continue racking-up the same humungous deficits, hyperinflation looms directly ahead. The only thing we can say for sure is that regardless of which of these two economic catastrophes takes place there will be no jobs for Americans.
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