Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 260,000 for the week ended Nov. 21, reports the Labor Department. The claims number matches the lowest level since 1973.
It really is absurd to believe we are not in a boom phase of a Fed created boom-bust cycle.
-RW
Real unemployment this low should be accompanied by salary increases as the demand for labor rises and there aren't enough jobless people to satisfy it. So far that apparently hasn't happened outside of isolated areas. When that happens I'll believe there is a wide spread boom rather than one isolated to the proximity of the fed money tap.
ReplyDeleteSo now we're supposed to believe the government statistics?
ReplyDeleteThese stats are manipulated ("adjusted") with definitions continuously redefined to ensure slow steady upward improvement in results. Looking behind the numbers shows the quality of jobs created is spiraling downward skewing toward the minimum-wage zone with paltry productivity. 2 jobs producing $10K/year in value is not more employment than 1 job producing $50K/year in value. And hours in the work week are progressively shrinking. 2 jobs at 20 hours a week is not more employment than 1 job at 50 hours a week. And overall labor force participation as a percentage of population is declining. RW claims this is a boom?
ReplyDeleteThat’s like tallying the “number of beers” the population is drinking to demonstrate a constant numerical increase. But omitting the fact that the beers being consumed are 6oz beers instead of 12oz beers. Containing 3.2% ABV instead of 5.0% ABV. And the percentage of the population drinking at all is falling. By any meaningful standard of measure, beer consumption is declining, despite a numerical “boom.”
Printed money is going predominantly into assets and non-productive financial pyramid schemes, not hiring. The 0.01% who are first receivers stand to obtain more return for their newly printed dollars just bidding up assets between each other. Relieving other first receivers of their printed money is far more lucrative that trying to sell goods to consumers who have no printed money and just can’t cough up very much. Amway participants don’t make the most money by actually selling LOC.
Thus there is strong employment only in the “arms manufacturers” of the financial valuation manipulation war: Silicon Valley startups and Fortune 500 executives. These employees create the “chips,” the legal shares and the associated “growth stories,” the valuation pretexts relevant to the 0.01% for their schemes they use against each other. The customers here are not the consuming public, but the first receivers themselves who can afford to pay whatever it takes to end up on top of the Ponzi scheme by holding the chips that are most attractive to other first receivers. So yeah, there is an employment boom, at Silicon Valley startups with billion dollar valuations and no revenues.
However at the majority of businesses where hiring needs to be funded by actual consumer purchases rather than investments by the first receivers, employment is stagnant or declining. There’s your “boom” for ya.