The jobs report is far more fantastic than you probably realize.

Even ABC radio, which carries Rush Limbaugh and many other top conservative hosts was complaining that weak wage growth was dragging down the economy. NPR said wages were very weak, "this late into an economic recovery."

This is shockingly untrue. In the first quarter of the year, real weekly earnings grew two 1982 inflation-adjusted dollars; that's about six real dollars. That's as much as real wages grew during the entire Obama administration. Wage growth then doubled THAT in the second quarter. And while we don't yet know the July inflation rate, the annual rate of nominal wage growth doubled again in July.

The last time inflation-adjusted wages grew this quickly was in the deflationary spiral in the middle of the Great Recession: the money earned by those people who managed to keep their jobs suddenly went much further as the price of oil and other commodities plunged.

But the absence of inflation over the past half year isn't because of plunging commodity prices. This non-inflation is structurally broad, encompassing core prices, brought about by federal reserve's aggressive rate hikes which slow rising demand. That means that this wage growth relative to inflation is real.

The employment growth is also truly astounding, once contextualized. The economy is headed towards two million jobs created in 2017. In 2014, Obama's best year for job creation, the economy added almost three million jobs. But here's the thing: boosted by immigration, the working-age population was growing as fast as 1.5 million workers per year. So far this year, the working-age population has DROPPED half a million, on pace to reach one million in the year. So two million jobs created means three million fewer people without jobs. Two million jobs a year under Obama's mass immigration would have meant only half a million fewer people without jobs.

The last time the population without jobs shrank so much was in 1984, during the Reagan boom years when stay-at-home moms were heading to work.

In 2010, at the deepest point in the recession, there were 65.4 jobs for every 100 working-age persons. The highest rate of employment was in 2001, when there were 74.45 jobs for every 100 working-age persons. Just since Trump was elected, there has been 1 job added per 100 working-age persons. There are now 71.4 jobs for every 100 working-age persons. To have the all-time highest employment rate, there would need to be about 5.3 million jobs created... or about 3.3 million as the economy shed 2 million working-age persons. With the present jobs growth, that should be achieved in two years.

It gets still better. Economists were dismissing the possibility that the economy could accelerate much because that such rapid job growth would lead to shortages of workers. But what's happening is that as wages are improving, people are deciding to re-enter the job market. It turns out we don't need to inflate the working-age population with wage-depressing, budget-busting immigration of largely unskilled workers who consume far more in government services than they pay in taxes. (In fact, most pay NEGATIVE tax rates, due to Earned Income Tax Credits.) If you offer decent wages, Pops might just decide to get a part-time job instead of collecting social security. And that means that this surge in jobs per working-age person might just take us about half-way to keeping social security solvent.

Quarterly report of weekly wages in constant ("chained") 1982 dollars: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q released July 19

Monthly payroll growth: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth released Oct 4

Hourly earnings growth: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000003?output_view=net_1mth released Oct 4

Consumer price indexes: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t03.htm released July 14

And yet, FoxConn is moving to America. So is AliBaba. The guys who sold us out have lost power. Frankly, I expect the HUGE shift in our trade balance is going to happen as the price of energy falls... as it is about to big time. Clean energy will mean there’s no reason to ship our iron ore to China, have them do the dirty work, and ship it back to the U.S. No matter what the relative costs of labor are, it’d be so much cheaper to make our own steel (for instance) than ship everything back and forth, if only our energy and environmental policies permitted it. Not only will solar energy be cleaner, it will also drive the price of coal and gas way down.

Yes, you’re so used to false hype about solar, you probably didn’t realize it was actually about to become true hype. Even without subsidies, solar is now cheaper than many fossil fuel energy production techniques, and it’s going to continue to go down in price. And no, it won’t all be made in China. Trump is too smart to let that happen. In turn, that’ll drive down domestic demand for coal, which will make it cheaper (and in turn, keep demand from falling too far.)

Foxconn is building one factory.

One. That is a start, but we will see. Alibaba is a huge Chinese company, I think that they are not so much “moving to” America, they are expanding into America.

We have been sold out, for so long, by so many, that we need someone to completely turn things around now.

Trump said some things, as a candidate, which made me think that is what he had in mind.

Haven’t seen those yet, but we will see.

I think North Korea is a higher priority right at the moment.

I’m just trying to accurately portray how deeply we have been sold out.

I think Trump gets things. I really do.

I however think he has gotten distracted by the healthcare system mess, and off-topic for a while because of that.

And we seem to maybe be entering a period of uncertainty, about North Korea and things. Unexpectedly so it seems. They seem to have gotten some serious help, from somewhere.

But we will see.

I am not trying to be negative. I am however trying to accurately portray our global situation.

We have in part, been sold out.

Trump seems (seemed?) to be ready to support American manufacturing once again.

I think that is very big.

IF it happens.

Right at the moment, we are just seeing China take over ever more, of the planet’s manufacturing.

Not good news, that.

Another take on the BLS jobs report

From Andy Hoffman at Miles Franklin, in my opinion one of the finest economic analysts at the present time:

Ho hum. Another first Friday of the month, and another fabricated “jobs” report with not a shred of correlation to real economic activity. Like, for instance, the completely ignored fact that - as I have discussed ad nauseum - the BLS’ "birth-death model"; which as we recently learned, accounts for 93% of all new "jobs" since the 2008 crisis; is based on the creation of unreported jobs at small businesses. This, despite the "inconvenient truth" that more small businesses have "died" since 2008 been "birthed."
Thus, if you believe the 209,000 jobs supposedly created in July is true – when 158,000 such "jobs" were fabricated by the birth/death model’s fabricated, goal-seeking algorithms - I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Or, for that, the post-2008 low "unemployment rate"; which, when Trump was on the campaign trail, claimed to be a lie - as opposed to today, in true politician fashion, when it has magically turned "true." This, amidst the weakest economic data since said Financial Crisis - atop surging loan defaults, record debt accumulation, and an exploding "Retail Armageddon."
I’m not even going to wait for said "details," as I know exactly what they’ll say. Which is, the vast majority of such "jobs" were low-paying, minimum-wage, part-time "gigs"; principally, in non-productive sectors like healthcare and education; and paradoxically, the same retail sector where sales have all but died, and Amazon.com is, all by itself, causing thousands of store closings. As quite obviously, the increasingly ignored jobs report is becoming the biggest joke in the financial world. That is, besides the credibility of the Central banks descrying "deflation," as they print and pump "markets" to all-time highs - amidst the worst economic Depression in generations, fueled by history’s largest-ever, and parabolically-rising, debt edifice.
I mean geez, we just learned that the Bank of Japan owns 71% of all equity ETFs on the Nikkei exchange, whilst the Swiss National Bank owns $80 billion of U.S. stocks alone - led by Apple, which "coincidentally" has been the single biggest contributor to the "markets"' recent gains. Which itself, owns $51 billion of Treasuries - i.e., more than most sovereign nations; which of course, it wouldn't dream of doing if it didn't know the "Yellen Put" was sitting below it. That said, of all the lunatic; hyper-inflationary; politically, economically, and socially destructive ramifications of QE - be it overt or covert - the "icing on the cake" is this damning chart; of how, following $1.3 trillion of ECB QE – which earlier this year, was extended from the sovereign to the corporate realm; and three years of negative interest rates; European "high-yield" - i.e., junk bond - yields are about to fall below that of 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds! I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Andy carries on with more bad news for quite a while, and he has hundreds of other well-reasoned blogs, audio blogs and podcasts on the subject, but I think you get the point ... that you are rather naive if you believe anything that the government or their MSM stooges say ... about just about anything ... especially the economy.

1. The BLS unemployment report is a mess because it only counts people actively looking for work. But the jobs count is backed up by other sources using other methods, such as polling (Gallup) and sampling (ADP). Small businesses are indeed detected by BLS, unless they are paying people under the table, which they would do only if the jobs are ridiculously low paying.

2. Trump was correct in saying the BLS U-3 unemployment report was garbage. But I never mentioned U-3 at all.

3. Andy Hoffman is being willfully stupid. He won’t even look at the details because he “knows that they’ll say.” Well, if you read past my headline you’d know that Andy Hoffman’s presumption is 100% pure grade-A bulls**t. Wages are up strongly.

4. What the Hell does the Bank of Japan’s investment in the Nikkei have to do with the price of tea in.... OK, bad idiom. Is it a bad thing that foreign nations are investing in the U.S. economy?

5. Seriously? You’re going to bitch about 10-year bonds being too HIGH? They’re o-so-slightly above recent all-time LOWS. Where the helll do you find such counter-factual, deliberately uninformed stupidity?

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