The Real Economic Numbers: 21.5% Unemployment, 10% Inflation And Negative Economic Growth

TEC ^ | 06/12/2018 | Michael Snyder

[SeekAndFind]

Every time the mainstream media touts some “wonderful new economic numbers” I just want to cringe. Yes, it is true that the economic numbers have gotten slightly better since Donald Trump entered the White House, but the rosy economic picture that the mainstream media is constantly painting for all of us is completely absurd. As you are about to see, if honest numbers were being used all of our major economic numbers would be absolutely terrible. Of course we can hope for a major economic turnaround for America under Donald Trump, but we certainly are not there yet. Economist John Williams of shadowstats.com has been tracking what our key economic numbers would look like if honest numbers were being used for many years, and he has gained a sterling reputation for being accurate. And according to him, it looks like the U.S. economy has been in a recession and/or depression for a very long time.

Let’s start by talking about unemployment. We are being told that the unemployment rate in the United States is currently “3.8 percent”, which would be the lowest that it has been “in nearly 50 years”.

To support this claim, the mainstream media endlessly runs articles declaring how wonderful everything is. For example, the following is from a recent New York Times article entitled “We Ran Out of Words to Describe How Good the Jobs Numbers Are”…

The real question in analyzing the May jobs numbers released Friday is whether there are enough synonyms for “good” in an online thesaurus to describe them adequately.

So, for example, “splendid” and “excellent” fit the bill. Those are the kinds of terms that are appropriate when the United States economy adds 223,000 jobs in a month, despite being nine years into an expansion, and when the unemployment rate falls to 3.8 percent, a new 18-year low.

Doesn’t that sound great?

It would be great, if the numbers that they were using were honest.

The truth, of course, is that the percentage of the population that is employed has barely budged since the depths of the last recession. According to John Williams, if honest numbers were being used the unemployment rate would actually be 21.5 percent today.

So what is the reason for the gaping disparity?

As I have explained repeatedly, the government has simply been moving people from the “officially unemployed” category to the “not in the labor force” category for many, many years.

If we use the government’s own numbers, there are nearly 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. That is higher than it was at any point during the last recession.

We are being conned. I have a friend down in south Idaho that is a highly trained software engineer that has been out of work for two years.

If the unemployment rate is really “3.8 percent”, why can’t he find a decent job?

By the way, if you live in the Boise area and you know of an opening for a quality software engineer, please let me know and I will get the information to him.

Next, let’s talk about inflation.

According to Williams, the way inflation has been calculated in this country has been repeatedly changed over the decades…

Williams argues that U.S. statistical agencies overestimate GDP data by underestimating the inflation deflator they use in the calculation.

Manipulating the inflation rate, Williams argues in Public Comment on Inflation Measurement , also enables the US government to pay out pensioners less than they were promised, by fudging cost of living adjustments.

This manipulation has ironically taken place quite openly over decades, as successive Republican and Democratic administrations made “improvements” in the way they calculated the data.

If inflation was still calculated the way that it was in 1990, the inflation rate would be 6 percent today instead of about 3 percent.

And if inflation was still calculated the way that it was in 1980, the inflation rate would be about 10 percent today.

Doesn’t that “feel” more accurate to you? We have all seen how prices for housing, food and health care have soared in recent years. After examining what has happened in your own life, do you believe that the official inflation rates of “2 percent” and “3 percent” that we have been given in recent years are anywhere near accurate?

Because inflation is massively understated, that has a tremendous effect on our GDP numbers as well.

If accurate inflation numbers were being used, we would still be in a recession right now.

In fact, John Williams insists that we would still be in a recession that started back in 2004.

And without a doubt, a whole host of other more independent indicators point in that direction too. The following comes from an excellent piece by Peter Diekmeyer…

Williams’ findings, while controversial, corroborate a variety of other data points. Median wage gains have been stagnant for decades. The U.S. labour force participation rate remains at multi-decade lows. Even our own light-hearted Big Mac deflator suggests that the U.S. economy is in a depression.

Another clue is to evaluate the U.S. economy just as economists would a third world nation whose data they don’t trust. They do this by resorting to figures that are hard to fudge.

There, too, by a variety of measures—ranging from petroleum consumption to consumer goods production to the Cass Freight Index—the U.S. economy appears to have not grown much, if at all, since the turn of the millennium.

In the end, all that any of us really need to do is to just open our eyes and look at what is happening all around us. We are on pace for the worst year for retail store closings in American history, and this “retail apocalypse” is hitting rural areas harder than anywhere else…

This city’s Target store is gone.

So is Kmart, MC Sports, JCPenney, Vanity and soon Herberger’s, a department store.

“The mall is pretty sad,” says Amanda Cain, a teacher and mother. “Once Herberger’s closes, we’ll have no anchors.”

About two-thirds of Ottumwa’s Quincy Place Mall will be empty with Herberger’s loss.

Of course it isn’t just the U.S. economy that is troubled either.

We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in global history, many nations around the globe are already experiencing a very deep economic downturn, and our planet is literally in the process of dying.

So please don’t believe the hype.

Yes, we definitely hope that things will get better, but the truth is that things have not been “good” for the U.S. economy for a very, very long time.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"Snyder, did you say this when obama was president?"

I don't know about author Snyder, but, yes, economist John Williams of shadowstats.com has been tracking what our key economic numbers would look like if honest numbers were being used for many years. His ShadowStats came up repeatedly during the Obama presidency and I absolutely believed his numbers then.

I would have expected a lot of the numbers he tracks to be much improved in the past 18 months since we through out Obummer / Felonia von Pantsuit. I am surprised he is not showing much improvement.

[GraceG]

[ Many “disability” folks are not going to get a job...too much fun smoking dope all day. Thus, the actual millions “unemployed.” ]

I say wire them up into the internet and insert a food tube and employ 1/2 of them to take care of the other half that are plugged in and put them to work mining gold in World of WarCraft.

It would be 100x cheaper than paying them welfare and they would be happy in their useless virtual lives.

We could even rent them out as NPCs in MMO games that europeon and asians play too.

A company could make a lot of money this way....

It would only take tech about 8-15 years for this to become an actual reality.

[mrsmith]

Why the picture of Duane Allman’s brother?
(Seriously: just bookmarking for later).

[GraceG]

[ I would have expected a lot of the numbers he tracks to be much improved in the past 18 months since we through out Obummer / Felonia von Pantsuit. I am surprised he is not showing much improvement. ]

Those stats will improve, they take more time to work through the system than the fake stats fed/gov feeds us.

[boycott]

Sounds like I would be better off in Haiti.

This guy makes a living selling doom. I agree the economy isn’t on solid ground but it’s better than it has been.

[Cen-Tejas]

.…...I do not know what the actual numbers are and I don’t believe Snyder does either. I do know in Texas that everyone breathing is going to work and hiring a good worker is all but impossible.

I would say unemployment among competent people wanting to work is zero in Texas.

One example: Nearly every restaurant has a “help wanted” sign seemingly permanently fixed to the front window.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

By the way, if you live in the Boise area and you know of an opening for a quality software engineer...

Your engineer friend needs to learn Hindi pronto. Then procure a fake H1B visa and he should be employed by tomorrow morning.

[Tailback]

anecdotal tidbit from me. I work for a public works agency. We hire many Summer temporary employees during paving and bridge repair season. Managers have had 4 rounds of applications accepted and interviews. We still haven’t filled all the positions. This has never happened before in my 19 years where I work.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[stylin19a]

I see, there are a lot of software engineer jobs, just not in Boise ?
Shouldn’t one go to where the jobs are ?

[Ozark Tom]

The trend to better numbers using the same measuring stick made sense for an apples-to-apples comparison of the national economy prior to the 2016 election. With the trend now firmly established toward increased prosperity, we can tackle the issue from the high road and point out who benefited.

Everyone has had the gut feeling that the inflation numbers were way off for a very long time. No secret that they were cherry picked in a way to make political hay in the decades since the 80’s. Friends of the DC elite profited; while, adjustments based on manipulated inflation numbers shortchanged any recipients like retirees receiving SS.

As the inflation rate affects lending, and a low interest rate allows more government borrowing without raising as loud an alarm, Congress is the most likely culprit pushing for these manipulations.

[Secret Agent Man]

yup

[Sequoyah101]

And miles of rail cars parked on lonely sidings all across the West. I wonder if they are still there?

[EdnaMode]

That’s good to know.

[Mr. Blond]

Jobs would be harder to find the lower the unemployment rate gets, particularly specific jobs.

[upchuck]

A gloom and doom site. The sky is falling :)

[50sDad]

And you did not write this article two years ago when all the numbers were Obama’s problem? The basic conceit of this would require all the media to be COVERING for Trump...which would mean this is really Superman’s Bizzaro World.

[grey_whiskers]

Ottumwa, Iowa, is not one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country; if you combine that with Amazon / Wal-Mart, and (just possibly) the twin ravages of the opioid epidemic, and the War on White Men waged first by Obama, then Washington, District of Mordor as a whole...

yeah, they're hurting.

But inflation (especially in food) is real. It used to be (before the Muslim Usurper took the White House) you could buy 1/2 gallon of ice cream locally, for $2.49, sometimes $2.00.

Now it's going for $5.99, for 1.5 quarts. = 2.4*4/3 ~ approximately triple in price. In 8 years.

No inflation my ass.

[grey_whiskers]

Boise is a mini hi-tech hub.

For that matter, I think Salt Lake City and Provo, UT, are as well.

They ought to fire all the H1-B's on 1 day's notice, and make every executive of every publically traded company who ever hired an H1-B, personally liable for triple damages to every US citizen who ever applied for a software job, or had to settle for far less pay.

Just confiscate all the wealth of Silicon Valley and Seattle, that'd be a good start.

Cause as Carly Fiorina said, "No American has a right to a job."

Must be her reasoning for becoming Ted Cruz's running mate against Trump.

[grey_whiskers]

They make up excuses to avoid hiring white males.