Friday, April 2, 2010

The US swindle continues

According to US Labor Department the American economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest burst of hiring in three years. Of course this is “great news” to Wall Street that continues to add fake ‘value’ to the stock exchange. Media is applauding and the Pick-pocket in Chief is probably celebrating.

However, this, as almost everything being told lately, is a scam.

162,000 jobs they say eh?

Well, we can immediately withdraw the census workers at 48,000. Most prediction were a lot higher than that but we can assume that the 50,000 or so of these knuckleheads wasting tax dollars knocking on doors that are missing here will pop up next month…

162,000-48,000= 114,000

In reality these census types take their salary from the productive sector (taxes stolen from actual jobs) so they should be counted double, or, since they are mostly part time at least 50% i.e. 24,000 more. But let’s ignore that. The figures are horrific anyway so we can be generous.

Then we have the Birth-Death model that has added an additional 84,000 phantom jobs. This model isn’t easy to grasp. I need to admit, I don’t get it and I read about and check these things daily. It can be accurate, but it never has been before so many of those “jobs” most likely don’t exist, but let’s say many do (we are very generous today!). A reasonable assumption is probably that at least 34,000 of those don’t exist.

114,000-34,000= 80,000

But the figures show other Temporary help services added 40,000 jobs in March. Since September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 313,000. This is usually temporary positions hired by government to do some medial task or part-time jobs soon to be gone. (And again people that get their salaries from taxes for the most part...)

80,000-40,000= 40,000

The US work force consists of about 154 million and has a $15 trillion economy that apparently generated 40,000 new jobs. Wow…

There are 15+ million Americans out of work, roughly double the total before the recession began in December 2007. More Americans entered the work force last month, which prevented the increase in jobs from reducing the unemployment rate. Still at 9.7%.

However - and here comes the first fun part - according to the same government figures more Americans said they were working part-time even though they preferred full-time work. When they and discouraged workers who have given up searching for jobs are included, the "underemployment" rate ticked up to 16.9 percent from 16.8 percent.

Aha, so unemployment is actually going up? Oh, but wait, it gets better.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) in-creased by 414,000 over the month to 6.5 million. So not only is unemployment going up, those out of work for a long period of time are increasing in numbers.

Did you see that in any newspaper!?

Also, the average work week increased to 34 hours from 33.9, could be a positive sign. Most employers are likely to work current employees longer before they hire new workers. But…

…average hourly earnings fell by two cents to $22.47. That shows that high unemployment is enabling companies to hold down wages.

So people are working longer for less pay? So where those positive upwards going shopping figures come from? Well, funny enough, people are out borrowing money again from banks that are already insolvent. Isn’t that special?

But the picture isn’t complete until you understand two things. Firstly, these are government produced numbers. Independent sources point to much worse numbers.

Secondly, do you know what the American government will do next week? They will sell $82 billion in debt. This at the same time as 10 Year Tresury yields surged again. One year ago they were 2.77%. Today they are 3.92%. That is a 41% increase. Thank God there is no inflation...

Yes, okay, this isn’t as bad as it has been, but ‘good news’? Come on.

I would actually, looking at long term unemployment and the actual unemployment figures say this is bad news, but that you will not find in any news reporting.

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