© The Economic Collpase Blog
Well, isn't that convenient? The Obama campaign desperately needed the last employment report to be released before the election to show that the unemployment rate had fallen below 8 percent, and somehow it magically happened. Even though non-farm payroll employment only increased by 114,000 last month (not enough to even keep up with population growth), the official unemployment rate fell from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. So how did that happen? Well, the unemployment number is not based on the survey of employers that showed that 114,000 jobs were added to the economy last month. Rather it is based on a survey of households. And that survey showed that the total number of Americans employed last month increased by a whopping 873,000 - almost eight times the number that the employer survey showed. That figure for September (873,000) was the biggest one month increase
in 29 years. And it just happened to come at the exact perfect time for Barack Obama. So was there a jobs report conspiracy? Examine the evidence and decide for yourself.
The number of Americans with a job fell
by 195,000 in July.
Then it fell by
another 119,000 in August.
But somehow in September it miraculously exploded in the other direction and 873,000 jobs were
added to the economy?
If you believe that, I have a bridge that I want to sell you.
Somehow, the largest increase in jobs in 29 years happened just when Barack Obama needed it the most.
Nah, that doesn't sound fishy to me at all.
We are being told that a big reason for the huge increase was the number of Americans working part-time for "economic reasons". That number surged from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September.
Why the sudden jump?
Nobody can really explain it.
And if you look at the U6 unemployment rate, nothing has really changed at all. U6 is still at 14.7 percent just like it was last month.
But the media is not going to talk about the U6 rate. Instead, all of the headlines are going to be about "7.8 percent".
According to the survey of employers, the U.S. economy added fewer jobs in September than it did in August, and it added fewer jobs in August than it did in July.
So according to the survey of employers, the employment situation in the United States is getting worse.
But according to the household survey, we just had the greatest month of job creation since the first term of Ronald Reagan.
Something does not add up.
And as I have written about
previously, the unemployment rate would actually be up around 11 percent instead of 7.8 percent if not for the millions of workers that the government claims "dropped out of the labor force" over the past few years because they became too discouraged to look for work.
So unemployment in America is still
a massive crisis, but the media is boldly proclaiming that things are getting better and that we are on the road to recovery.
Of course Obama looks like the cat who ate the canary today. He is just thrilled with the "7.8 percent" number.
Comment: Ellen Brown explains what's really going on in Web of Debt: