No Jobs for Americans As Unemployment Number Drops From from 7.0% to 6.7%

Still thinking about those new jobs creation numbers and how the unemployment rate came down from 7% to 6.7%?

Dr. Roberts says it's a shill, and he's got the logic and real numbers to prove it.

I noticed today that the financial media presstitutes were a bit hesitant to hype the drop in the rate of unemployment when there was no jobs growth to account for it. The Wall Street and bank economists did their best to disbelieve the jobs report as did some of the bought-and-paid-for academic economists. Too many interests have a stake in the non-existent recovery declared 4.5 years ago to be able to admit that it is not really there.

Do you believe that the unemployment rate really dropped from 7.0% to 6.7%, or that many more people, unable to find work, mysteriously dropped off or were dropped from the rolls? I'm voting for No. 2.

Particularly because I've been unemployed, except for very short-term contract jobs (and I'm talking months not years - sometimes days!) for over a decade. I believe that the plan is not to bring real jobs back to the US - that is, not until the cost of labor here equals India's, China's, and/or Mexico's. And you know that means the elimination of all worker protections like minimum wage and child labor laws.

Thanks for your support!

No Jobs For Americans

January 10, 2014 

No Jobs For Americans

Paul Craig Roberts

The alleged recovery took a direct hit from Friday’s payroll jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 74,000 net new jobs in December.

Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 70,700 of these jobs or 95.5%. It is likely that the December wholesale and retail hires were temporary for the Christmas shopping season, which doesn’t seem to have been very exuberant, especially in light of Macy’s decision to close five stores and lay off 2,500 employees. It is a good bet that these December hires have already been laid off.

A job gain of 74,000, even if it is real, is about half of what is needed to keep the unemployment rate even with population growth. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate fell from 7.0% to 6.7%. Clearly, this decline in unemployment was not caused by the reported 74,000 jobs gain. The unemployment rate fell, because Americans unable to find jobs ceased looking for employment and, thereby, ceased to be counted as unemployed.

In America the unemployment rate is a deception just like everything else. The rate of American unemployment fell, because people can’t find jobs. The fewer the jobs, the lower the unemployment rate.

I noticed today that the financial media presstitutes were a bit hesitant to hype the drop in the rate of unemployment when there was no jobs growth to account for it. The Wall Street and bank economists did their best to disbelieve the jobs report as did some of the bought-and-paid-for academic economists. Too many interests have a stake in the non-existent recovery declared 4.5 years ago to be able to admit that it is not really there.

I have been examining the monthly jobs reports for a decade or longer. I must say that I am struck by the December report. Normally, a mainstay of jobs gain is the category “education and health services,” with “ambulatory health care services” adding thousands of jobs. In December the net contribution of “education and health services” was zero, with “ambulatory health care services” losing 4,100 jobs and health care losing 6,000 jobs. If memory serves, this is a first. Perhaps it reflects adverse impacts of the ripoff known as Obamacare, possibly the worst piece of domestic legislation passed in decades.

I was also struck by the report that the gain in employment of waitresses and bartenders, normally a large percentage of the job gain, was down to 9,400 jobs, which were offset by declines elsewhere, such as the layoff of local school teachers.

Aren’t Washington’s priorities wonderful? $1,000 billion per year in Quantitative Easing, essentially subsidies for 6 banks “too big to fail,” and nothing for school teachers. It should warm every Republican’s heart.

A tiny bright spot in the payroll jobs report is 9,000 new manufacturing jobs. The US manufacturing workforce has declined so dramatically since jobs offshoring became the policy of American corporations that 9,000 jobs hardly register on the scale.

Fabricated metal products, which I think is roofing metal, accounted for 56% of the manufacturing jobs. Roofing metal is not an export. Employment in the production of manufactured products that could be exported, such as “computer and electronic equipment,” and “electronic instruments” declined by 2,400 and 3,500 respectively.

Clearly, this is not a payroll jobs report that provides cover for the looting of the prospects of ordinary Americans by the financial and offshoring elites.

One can wonder how the BLS civil servants who produced it can avoid retribution. It will be interesting to see what occurs in the January payroll jobs report.

Comments:

Hosea McAdoo
It seems to me that we are doing everything backwards and are producing an economic death spiral.

Since money moving through the economy produces economic health anything that slows this will harm the economy. Austerity kills jobs and reduces the flow of money. In this situation how can we really believe things will improve.

At this time borrowing money is cheap and seems to be the time to stimulate the economy with jobs like the WPA and CCC. We have plenty of work to do on public property such as bridges which are a problem everywhere. These jobs will produce much more money flow than giving the super rich a tax break where more money goes into the dead end of high finance.

In addition corporations with the  help of Congress has gutted good paying middle class jobs in manufacturing by offshoring thanks to trade agreements. When available these jobs are now being traded for minimum wage service jobs.

Please tell me how we can expect things to get better without major change in stimulation. I just heard that the Fed is severely reducing the funding of stimulation thus deepening the death spiral.

I hear talk about great changes in the future. Where will they come from without major changes in governance? The present situation makes the rich and powerful and their Congressional toads very rich at the expense of the rest of us.