A superficial take of today's jobs report would note that both jobs and earnings "blew past expectations, flying in the face of Fed rate hikes", and while that is accurate at the headline level, it couldn't be further from the truth if one digs a little deeper in today's numbers.
Bottom Line
- The BLS has a single, laser-focused political agenda - not to spoil the political climate at a time when Democrats just lost control of the House
- There were 158.458 million employed workers in March 2022
- 158.470 million in November 2022 an increase of just 12,000 over 8 months, a period in which the number of payrolls reportedly increased by 2.7 million workers
Bottom Line
- Since March, the US has lost 398K full-time employees offset by a 190K gain of part-time workers
- Due to deterioration in the economy, more people are losing their higher-paying jobs and switching to lower-paying, benefits-free parts-time jobs
- BLS data engineers have been busy goalseeking the Establishment Survey to make it appear as if the economy is growing strongly
- In reality, they are applying the same erroneous seasonal adjustment factor that gave such a wrong perspective of the labor market in the aftermath of the pandemic
- We have reached an absurd part of the business cycle when average hours are declining in certain sectors even as hourly earnings are rising
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