Archive - Feb 7, 2012

Over the past week we have repeatedly exposed the BLS' shennanigans to both keep the headline unemployment rate suppressed and to generate an upward bias in the market courtesy of a "bigger than expected beat" of expectations. Granted, various semantics experts continue to scratch their heads in attempting to explain a collapsing labor force when even Goldman's Sven Jari Stehn just predicted that it will drop to 63.1% by the end of 2012 (and 62.5% by the end of 2015). Funny then that the US will have no unemployment left when the participation rate drops to 58.5%. And no, the "population soared argument based on revised data" doesn't quite cut it when the bulk of said surge not only did not get a job, but was not even counted toward the labor force. Yet what the biggest flaw with all these arguments that vainly (and veinly) attempt to defend the US economy as if it is growing, is that they focus exclusively on the quantity of jobs, doctored or not, and completely ignore the quality. We have decided to step in and fill this void.