More Guff From the Gov’t

Last Friday saw the release of a bombshell jobs report, with headlines exclaiming that the US economy added over 250,000 jobs in July, far in excess of any forecasts. The reality was far grimmer. Those “jobs” weren’t actually created by businesses – they were created by the statisticians who compiled the numbers, through the process of “seasonal adjustment.” That’s a bit of statistical magic that the government likes to pull out of its hat when the real data isn’t very flattering. It’s done with GDP, it’s done with job numbers, and similar manipulation is done with government inflation figures to keep them lower than actual price increases. In reality, there are a million fewer people with jobs this month than last month, but the magic of seasonal adjustment turns that into a gain of 255,000.

Delving further into the jobs report, we see that many of the jobs that were supposedly created were jobs in government and health care. Government jobs, of course, are paid for by siphoning money away from taxpayers. And health care jobs are increasingly created solely because of the ever-growing mandates of Obamacare. Other major sources of job growth were temp jobs and leisure & hospitality (i.e. waiters and bartenders). These aren’t long-lasting jobs that will contribute to economic growth, they are mostly just jobs that cater to the tastes of the well-to-do who continue to benefit from the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy.

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