SLOWIN’ DOWN
US econ cools after hot start to 2017
THE government’s monthly employment statistics are worthless.
I know, I know, I’ve chewed on the high baloney-quotient in the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report many times before. And talking about crappy government statistics can be as exciting as talking about rush hour traffic.
But I urge you not to swallow Labor’s baloney, because it isn’t healthy.
Labor on Friday reported a woeful 98,000 jobs were created in March — compared with the 175,000 jobs that the experts were predicting. They also revised down job gains in February by 7 percent and the gains in January by 9 percent.
Overall, pretty darn disappointing — but not totally surprising, seeing how the Atlanta Federal Reserve on Friday was reporting that first-quarter gross domestic product grew at a paltry annual rate of 0.6 percent.
With growth like that, people could soon be using the word “recession.”
So while Labor was serving up disappointing news, the inept pencil-pushers at the Census Bureau were telling us that the unemployment rate had fallen to 4.5 percent — a 10-year low.
Is that your take based on observations in your neighborhood? It doesn’t jibe with what I’m seeing.
Those 98,000 new jobs for March that were announced Friday were, as usual, the result of seasonal adjustments. What was the actual number before Labor hocus-pocused the figure?
There was really a gain of 670,000 jobs, according to Labor. The 98,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were 14 percent of the actual number of jobs created. In February, the 219,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were 22 percent of the 1.006 million actual jobs created.
So Mother Nature’s un- seasonably warm February weather seems to have faked out Labor’s seasonal adjusting computers. Not really surprising.
In March, Labor reported that 17 percent of all the new jobs created were in the category called “services to buildings and dwellings.” Doormen? Perhaps. Supers, maintenance workers? Maybe.
Was there a spurt of hiring for these jobs that I missed?
This seems like more nonsense.
Like when in January, when most retail stores let go their seasonal help — and many others shut their doors for good — Labor reported that “retail trade employment” grew by 46,000 jobs, more than any other category. Really? Is that believable?
I believe the jobs numbers can’t be trusted because the economy isn’t growing fast enough to create these jobs.
I’ll put my money on the job figures being wrong, especially now that Labor is making downward adjustments.
The sad part about this little game is that there are real consequences.
Despite the fact that the nation’s economy is barely breathing when measured by GDP growth, the Federal Reserve is on a steady course of tightening interest rates. And that will slow the economy down.
That will be like giving sedatives to a comatose man.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her crew believe, or are pretending to believe, that the labor market is doing just fine. And they inexplicably think the US is close to a wonderfully imprecise term that’s called “full employment.” Nonsense! In fact, that’s what Labor should call its monthly report — The Nonsense Report. President Trump should pull the plug on these monthly brain teasers before someone gets hurt.