Don’t Be Stupid – The U.S. Economy LOST 2.5 Million Jobs Last Month

Authored by:  Michael Snyder

Fake numbers that are released by the government get turned into fake news by the corporate media, and many Americans don’t even realize that they are being conned. Major news outlets all over the country are breathlessly trumpeting the “blockbuster jobs report” as if it is a sign from heaven that good economic times are ahead. We are told that the U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs last month, but that isn’t true. Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy lost 2.5 million jobs in January. Yes, you read that correctly. So how in the world does a loss of 2.5 million jobs become a “gain” of 517,000 jobs? Every month, government bureaucrats apply “adjustments” to the numbers that they believe are appropriate. At this point, their “adjustments” have become so absurd that they have turned the monthly employment report into a total farce.

As I have been documenting on my website for weeks, there have been massive layoffs over the last several months.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Lyft, Twitter, Walmart, McDonald’s, FedEx, and countless other large corporations have decided to conduct mass layoffs.

But now the government expects us to believe that the U.S. economy is adding jobs at a very brisk pace.

That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Unfortunately, the corporate media is buying it. For example, CNBC just posted an article that described the jobs report as “stunningly strong”…

  • The employment picture started 2023 on a stunningly strong note, with nonfarm payrolls posting their biggest gain since July 2022.
  • Nonfarm payrolls increased by 517,000 for January, above the Dow Jones estimate of 187,000 and December’s gain of 260,000, according to a Labor Department report Friday.

And a CNN article has quoted one expert as saying that “the labor market is more like a bullet train”…

  • “With 517,000 new jobs added in January 2023 and the unemployment rate at 3.4%, this is a blockbuster report demonstrating that the labor market is more like a bullet train,” Becky Frankiewicz, president, and chief commercial officer of ManpowerGroup, said Friday.

Really?

After all of the layoffs that we have witnessed in recent months, does she believe that?

Not to be outdone, Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi boldly declared that any concerns about a coming recession “should be completely dashed by these numbers”…

  • The January jobs report should “dash” concerns of a recession, Moody’s chief economist said Friday, but warned that the numbers might overstate job growth.
  • “These numbers should completely dash any concern the economy is in recession or close to a recession,” Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNN’s Matt Egan on Friday, adding that it would take “an awful lot” to send the U.S. economy into a downturn.

Come on, man.

You are smarter than that.

The U.S. economy did not add 517,000 jobs last month.

That is the “adjusted” number.

The “unadjusted” number shows that the U.S. economy lost 2.5 million jobs last month. The following comes from Bloomberg.

  • The government’s updated seasonal factors for the establishment survey may have impacted the headline payrolls figure. On an unadjusted basis, payrolls fell by 2.5 million last month.

That is actually what was measured.

But if you brazenly add more than 3 million jobs to the report that do not exist, it makes it look like the U.S. economy is doing just great.

Joe Biden was eager to take credit for the “spectacular” jobs report. He also told reporters that he takes no responsibility for the raging inflation crisis that we are currently experiencing.

  • He replied emphatically ‘no’ when asked if he took any accountability for the price rises under his presidency. ‘It was already there when I got here, man.’
  • ‘Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging. Inflation was rising. We weren’t manufacturing the damn thing here. We were in real economic difficulty.’
  • Inflation in January 2021, when Biden took office, was 1.4 percent. The latest December figures were 6.5 percent, down from a June 2022 peak of 9 percent.

For the next month, the Biden administration will endlessly boast that 517,000 jobs were added to the economy in January. Most Americans will only know that it is a number that is entirely fictional.

The cold, hard reality is that economic activity is slowing down all around us, and many people are starting to become quite desperate.

  • A video out of Austin, Texas, shows desperate people climbing into supermarket dumpsters to retrieve food that may have been discarded due to a widespread power outage.
  • The shocking footage Thursday from behind an H-E-B grocery store in Southeast Austin featured people having a free-for-all from dumpsters in what one commenter on Instagram described as a “dystopian hellscape.”

From now on, I wish the government would only release the raw, unadjusted employment numbers to the corporate media.

Because there is way too much guesswork into the “adjustments” that the government bureaucrats are coming up with.

But that is never going to happen.

Every month they will continue to tell us that things are better than they are.

At least that will give me something to write about.

If anyone tries to shove the “517,000 jobs” number in your face, please share this article with them.

That figure does not reflect reality in any way.

The raw numbers show that 2.5 million jobs were lost last month, which is horrible.

And as I continue to warn my readers, incredibly challenging economic times are on the horizon.

More layoffs are coming, the housing market will continue to crash, and global food shortages will continue to intensify.

So don’t let anyone fool you. We are plunging into a severe economic downturn, and the months ahead will not be pleasant.

This article was printed from TradingSig.com

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