The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits slid to the lowest level since 1973 in the seven days ended July 18.
To be sure, there is a lot of volatility in the numbers from week to week, but the trend is clear.
There is zero chance that the Fed is going to launch a new round of quantitative easing, or fear hiking interest rates, under these conditions.
I want to make clear, though, that there is erratic money supply growth activity now going on, as I am reporting in the EPJ Daily Alert. This activity could move the economy from the boom phase to the bust phase, but it is far from definitive at this point. For now, I consider the bear still in hibernation.
How about the 90+ million people who are not working? Many of those no longer have the get out of jail free card from state/fed unemployment insurance. They exhausted it years ago. It's a boom for a few. It's a disaster for folks who had good paying jobs and who are now flipping burgers or are greeters at Walmart.
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DeleteIncludes persons aged 16 years and older in the civilian noninstitutional population who are neither employed nor unemployed in accordance with the definitions contained in this glossary. Information is collected on their desire for and availability for work, job search activity in the prior year, and reasons for not currently searching. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/08/drudge-misleadingly-hypes-almost-90-million-peo/192981
Governments everywhere wrote the book on how to lie with statistics...but the defeat of Jimmy in 1980 was a watershed moment. RW was in short pants at the time, but all politicos realized then that no government going forward would come close to representing the real economy with government stats ever again. For this reason John Williams of shadow stats has his market niche of interpreting gov data the way it was back in the 70s. Among many delusions, believing the government's story is perhaps the saddest.
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