Real Unemployment Rate

Today, we got the laughable news that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force grew by over 660,000, while the total civilian non-institutional population grew by just 167,000 to 244,995, meaning the actual labor force declined by 496,000. Which is precisely the issue: fudging the labor force participation rate is how the Obama administration has managed to maintain the myth the economy has grown under his leadership for the past 4+ years. It hasn't, and in fact if one renormalizes for the recent long-term average participation rate of 65.8%, one gets a very different number. How different? A difference that is now at a record compared to what is reported. As the chart below shows, a "renormalization" process indicates a massive and record 4% difference between the reported unemployment rate of 7.6%, and what the real unemployment rate is assuming normal growth of the labor force, which in March was 11.6%, up from 11.3% in February, and the highest since August 2012 when it was 11.7%. More importantly, as the real unemployment chart shows, the economy has not improved by one bit since 2009!

With the Fed now fully engaged, and few if any policy tools left, the effectiveness of continued artificial stimulation is clearly waning.  Lower mortgages rates, interest rates and excess liquidity served well in priming the pumps of the real estate and financial markets when valuations were extremely depressed.  However, four years and four programs later, stock valuations are no longer low, earnings are no longer depressed and the majority of real estate related activity has likely been completed. It is for this reason that the returns from each subsequent program have diminished.  The reality is that Fed may have finally found the limits of their effectiveness as earnings growth slows, economic data weakens and real unemployment remains high.  Reminiscent of the choices of Goldilocks - it is likely the Fed's estimates for economic growth in 2013 are too hot, employment is too cold and inflation estimates may be just about right.  The real unspoken concern is the continued threat of deflation and the next recession.

Despite the fact that myself and everyone else acting like they know what lays ahead are proven wrong time and time again, we continue to make predictions about the future. It makes us feel like we have some control, when we don’t. The world is too complex, too big, too corrupt, too lost in theories and delusions, and too dependent upon too many leaders with too few brains to be able to predict what will happen next. This is the time of year when all the “experts” will be making their 2013 predictions - but few will address where they were wrong in previous predictions. I’m more interested in why I was wrong. It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system. Will 2013 be the year it all collapses in a flaming heap of rubble? I don’t know. Maybe you should ask an “expert”.

Since the release of the most recent BLS Employment Situation Report, which showed an astounding drop in the unemployment rate, we have spent a good bit of time dissecting the release and discussing why the real unemployment rate is really between 17% and 22% depending on how you calculate it.  (See Here and Here)  However, today's release of the September NFIB Small Business Survey shows the extent to which the current BLS employment calculation method may have detached from reality. No matter how you look at the data there is a clear disconnect between the BLS report and economic realities.  From the NFIB's point view it is "economic uncertainty" that weighs on business owners and keeps them on the defensive.  The actions by the Federal Reserve to buy bonds and inject liquidity into the financial system does not solve the problem of "poor sales", reduce regulations that strangle growth or solve the "fiscal cliff" issues that threaten business profitability by the end of the year.  

Today's reported unemployment rate: 8.1%. The reason: the labor "participation" dropped to a 31 year low 63.5% as reported earlier. Of course, this number is pure propaganda, and makes no sense for one simple reason: despite the economic collapse started in December 2007, the US civilian non-institutional population since then has grown by 186,000 people every month on average hitting an all time high of 243,566,000 in August. These people need a job, and the traditional shorthand is that at least 100,000 jobs have the be generated every month for the unemployment rate to merely stay flat, let along improve. So what does one get when one uses the long-term average of the past 30 or so years which happens to be 65.8%? One gets an unemployment number that is 45% higher than the reported 8.1%, or 11.7%. That is what the real unemployment rate is assuming the US labor participation rate was realistic and not manipulated by the BLS cronies and the Bank of Spain assisted Arima-X-13 seasonal adjustment models. It also means that, as the chart below shows, the spread between the real and propaganda data hit an all time record, which was to be expected two months ahead of America's banker muppet presidential election.

Peter Schiff pulled an OccupyWallStreet (remember that whole Occupy movement?) at the Democratic National Convention. What he did, was succeed in exposing some very disturbing prevailing beliefs about the government's role in establishing the 'utility' value of the free market as manifested by corporations, namely that according to a broad cross-section of society, it is the government job to "explicitly outlaw profitability."  We wish to remind readers that this has been done on numerous occasions in the past, but most "effectively" in the Soviet Union's centrally planned regime. Until the USSR's failure of course. The premise of eliminating profitability is also quite popular, and even has its own name: nationalization, and its result in a business "manager" who is perfectly ambivalent if the state owned enterprise makes or loses money. After all the wage is determined by a politburo, and is not a function of the profits, or losses, a business may engender. Furthermore, it is probably worth reminding that the primary tenet behind capitalism is the production of goods and services for a profit. Sadly, quite a few of these concepts appear to have not been made clear to not just one or two Americans as the following clip demonstrates.

Our entire society is in a downward social and economic spiral. We are just at different levels of decay (Dante’s circles of hell). At the current pace it won’t be long before I’m writing about the 50 States of Squalor. It is virtually impossible to reverse a decline that has been underway for the last three decades. We sold our souls to Wall Street and chose a debt financed illusion of wealth over productive savings and investment which would have led to real wealth. Our choices are reflected in the continued deterioration and decay along West Chester Pike and the squalor that is West Philly. Grey and decay will carry the day. The words on the Statue of Liberty should be revised from,  ”Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, to “we have become your indebted, materialistic, obese, aging masses yearning for the government to protect and sustain us as our once great nation decays.”

As a nation, we have chosen this path. We made the choices and now we will suffer the consequences.

Propaganda unemployment rate: 8.1%; Real unemployment rate: 11.6%. Reason for difference: organic growth of labor force which grows alongside the broader population. Don't be confused by cheap explanations on TV why the labor force should be declining (especially with ZIRP meaning pre-retirement workers have to stay in the labor force ever longer to supplant their meager fixed income): the widely accepted definition of the labor pool, that used by the CBO and all other government forecasting agencies, assumes a 90,000 growth in the labor force every month as it has to keep in line with the growth of the US population! The implication is simple: using a real labor force participation rate long-term average of 65.8%, the real unemployment rate in April was 11.6%, based on the 5.4 million additional workers that should be counted as part of the U-3 which then means that the real number of unemployed is not 12.5 million but 17.9 million, which in turn implies a 11.6% unemployment rate in the US. This also means that the spread between the propaganda, and the real number is now 3.5%: the most it has been since the early 1980s.

No wonder one third of Americans are obese. The crap we are shoveling into our bodies is on par with the misinformation, propaganda and lies that are being programmed into our minds by government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, corporate media gurus, and central banker puppets. Chief Clinton propaganda mouthpiece, James Carville, famously remarked during the 1992 presidential campaign that, “It’s the economy, stupid”. Clinton was able to successfully convince the American voters that George Bush’s handling of the economy caused the 1991 recession. In retrospect, it was revealed the economy had been recovering for months prior to the election. No one could ever accuse the American people of being perceptive, realistic or critical thinking when it comes to economics, math, history or distinguishing between truth or lies. Our government controlled public school system has successfully dumbed down the populace to a level where they enjoy their slavery and prefer conscious ignorance to critical thought.

The last week has offered an amusing display of the difference between the cheerleading corporate mainstream media, lying Wall Street shills and the critical thinking analysts. What passes for journalism at CNBC and the rest of the mainstream print and TV media is beyond laughable. Their America is all about feelings. Are we confident? Are we bullish? Are we optimistic about the future? America has turned into a giant confidence game. The governing elite spend their time spinning stories about recovery and manipulating public opinion so people will feel good and spend money. Facts are inconvenient to their storyline. The truth is for suckers. They know what is best for us and will tell us what to do and when to do it....  The drones at this government propaganda agency relentlessly massage the data until they achieve a happy ending. They use a birth/death model to create jobs out of thin air, later adjusting those phantom jobs away in a press release on a Friday night. They create new categories of Americans to pretend they aren’t really unemployed. They use more models to make adjustments for seasonality. Then they make massive one-time adjustments for the Census. Essentially, you can conclude that anything the BLS reports on a monthly basis is a wild ass guess, massaged to present the most optimistic view of the world. The government preferred unemployment rate of 8.3% is a terrible joke and the MSM dutifully spouts this drivel to a zombie-like public. If the governing elite were to report the truth, the public would realize we are in the midst of a 2nd Great Depression.

Sick of the BLS propaganda? Then do the following calculation with us: the US civilian non-institutional population was 242,269 in January, an increase of 1.7 million month over month: apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number (because as chart 2 below shows, people are not retiring as the popular propaganda goes: in fact labor participation in those aged 55 and over has been soaring as more and more old people have to work overtime, forget retiring), and you get 159.4 million: that is what the real labor force should be. The BLS reported one? 154.4 million: a tiny 5 million difference. Then add these people who the BLS is purposefully ignoring yet who most certainly are in dire need of labor and/or a job to the 12.758 million reported unemployed by the BLS and you get 17.776 million in real unemployed workers. What does this mean? That using just the BLS denominator in calculating the unemployed rate of 154.4 million, the real unemployment rate actually rose in January to 11.5%. Compare that with the BLS reported decline from 8.5% to 8.3%. It also means that the spread between the reported and implied unemployment rate just soared to a fresh 30 year high of 3.2%. And that is how with a calculator and just one minute of math, one strips away countless hours of BLS propaganda.

What do the NAR, Consumer Confidence and CBO forecasts have in common? If you said, "they are all completely worthless" you are absolutely correct. Alas, the market needs to "trade" off numbers, which is why the just released CBO numbers apparently are important... And the fact that the CBO predicted negative $2.5 trillion in net debt by 2011 back in 2011 is largely ignored. Anyway, here are some of the highlights, but here is the kicker: "Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percent"- translation: CBO just admitted that the BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%. Thank you.

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to grasp the fudging the BLS has been doing every month for years now in order to bring the unemployment rate lower: the BLS constantly lowers the labor force participation rate as more and more people "drop out" of the labor force for one reason or another. While there is some floating speculation that this is due to early retirement, this is completely counterfactual when one also considers the overall rise in the general civilian non institutional population. In order to back out this fudge we are redoing an analysis we did first back in August 2010, which shows what the real unemployment rate would be using a realistic labor force participation rate. To get that we used the average rate since 1980, or ever since the great moderation began. As it happens, this long-term average is 65.8% (chart 1). We then apply this participation rate to the civilian noninstitutional population to get what an "implied" labor force number is, and additionally calculate the implied unemployed using this more realistic labor force. We then show the difference between the reported and implied unemployed (chart 2). Finally, we calculate the jobless rate using this new implied data. It won't surprise anyone that as of December, the real implied unemployment rate was 11.4% (final chart) - basically where it has been ever since 2009 - and at 2.9% delta to reported, represents the widest divergence to reported data since the early 1980s. And because we know this will be the next question, extending this lunacy, America will officially have no unemployed, when the Labor Force Participation rate hits 58.5%, which should be just before the presidential election.

Pretty much  precisely what we noted earlier today: "A couple of behind-the-scene facts: from October to February, an epic
700k people have left the work force. If you actually adjust for the
fact that the labour force participation rate has plunged this cycle to a
27-year low the unemployment would be sitting at 12% today. Moreover
the employment-to-population ratio — the so-called “employment rate” —
stagnated in February at 58.4% and is actually lower now than it was
last fall when “double dip” was the flavour du jour."

Probably the last chart to bury any doubt about just how truly horrible today's employment data was, comes from a little observed data metric: that showing the number of people who are not in the labor force, but who want a job now. The number just hit 6,643K, a jump of 431K from December, and the highest number in history. These are people that would send the unemployment rate to about 12% if they were in the labor force. Nothing else needs to be said.