Apr
2
The MSM and Democrats are making a lot of hoopla over the alleged creation of 162,000 jobs in March – left out of the hoopla, as noted over at Mish’s, is the fact that of the 162,000 “created”, 81,000 are estimated to have been created by the BLS. Got that? There is no hard data for half the March figure – its pulled out of thin air by BLS.
Its a thing BLS does where they guess how many jobs were created by all the new businesses which supposedly started up in March. And if they are wrong about that? Then they’ll revise the whole thing down the road to make data fit reality. Those reports earlier this year about hundreds of thousands of fewer jobs in 2009 was just that – BLS turning guesses in to hard data.
Now, if we are in a recovery as the experts say, then its ok to guess that 81,000 jobs were created on top of the 81,000 you know about. But if we’re not in a recovery, then the guess is nonsense and unemployment is actually higher than the numbers suggest. Given that what the BLS calls the “U-6” number of unemployed was 17.3% in December, 16.5% in January, 16.8% in February and 16.9% in March, I think we can see something other than an economic recovery.
What is the “U-6″? That is everyone who isn’t working – official unemployed, partially employed and workers who given up because there simply are no jobs to be had. This figure has been steadily rising since the drop between December and January and seems to be marching back towards the 17.9% peak of February, 2009.
I expect that the various stimulus programs will continue to massage the numbers of unemployed downwards for at least a little while – but unless there is a sudden, big rebound in manufacturing and construction, we simply will not create the jobs necessary to really get jobs to all the people who need them. And this, in turn, has an increasingly negative effect – the longer a person is unemployed the more likely it is he’ll have burned through his unemployment benefits and savings and thus will have ever less to spend. This hurts overall demand in the economy, and that can hurt employment even more, etc.
We need sustained programs to get Americans making, mining and growing things – only by wealth creation can we get out of this mess. Bailing out bankers and using government spending to give a false-healthy glow to this or that sector for a month or two is foolish. It just piles up debt, delays real recovery and sets the stage for an even worse crash down the road.
How long can the government sustain this smoke and mirrors recovery? I don’t know. I didn’t think they’d be able to carry it this far – but I’ve got friends who are much better at economics than I who have told me all along that it would be 2011 before the really baleful effects of Obamunism would take hold.
Be that as it may – tomorrow, next month, next year: the crash is coming. We can still avoid the worst of it, but only if we act now to balance the budgets, cut the costs of business and encourage wealth-creating economic activity. Will Obama do such? Not a chance – he doesn’t even suspect there’s a problem, let alone see any possible solutions.
It could be a very rough ride.
