A few statistical points of interest on the almost unbelievable US employment report with charts

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=201459

That's 0.6% of the entire labor force
that departed the working population in one month,
three times the alleged drop in the unemployment rate.



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/record-12-million-people-fall-out-labor-force-one-month-labor-force-participation-rate-tumbles-

...it appears that the people not in the labor force
exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million.

No, that's not a typo:
1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month!

So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million,
the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning,
those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million.

Which means that the civilian labor force
tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7%



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/implied-unemployment-rate-rises-115-spread-propaganda-number-surges-30-year-high

...add these people who the BLS is purposefully ignoring
yet who most certainly are in dire need of labor and/or a job
to the 12.758 million reported unemployed by the BLS
and you get 17.776 million in real unemployed workers.

What does this mean?

...the real unemployment rate actually rose in January to 11.5%.

Compare that with the BLS reported decline from 8.5% to 8.3%.

It also means that the spread
between the reported and implied unemployment rate just soared
to a fresh 30 year high of 3.2%.

And that is how with a calculator and just one minute of math,
one strips away countless hours of BLS propaganda.



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/final-nail-todays-nfp-tragicomedy-record-surge-part-time-workers

...the breakdown between Full Time and Part Time Workers
(defined as those "who usually work less than 35 hours per week").

...In January, the number of Part Time workers rose by 699K,
the most ever,
from 27,040K to 27,739K,
the third highest number in the history of this series.

How about Full time jobs?

They went from 113,765 to 113,845.

An 80K increase.

So the epic January number of 141.6 million employed,
...only about 10 % of that was full time jobs:
...in which employers can't even afford to give their workers
full time employee benefits.

We can't wait for Mr. Liesman to explain how this number, too,
is unadulterated hogwash, and how it too is explained away
to confirm economic strength.



On Unemployment: Why would some compare dissimilar calculations of economic statistics?

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time
as the State can shield the people
from the political, economic and/or military consequences.

Joseph Goebbels

Statistics mask real economic pain

The jobless rate improved this week. It’s now 9.7 percent.

So it sounds as if Henry Paulson…can join Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers in self-congratulation over their roles in preventing a second Great Depression.

They can all cite today’s jobless rate and contrast it favorably to 1933, when it was about 25 percent.

…But the fact is that private-sector employment actually looks worse than during the Great Depression. If you compare the numbers with 1933, more than a third of U.S. workers are jobless today.

…In 1933, 25% of the working population meant 12.8 million people were out of work in a workforce of about 51 million. That included senior citizens, because only about 10% of older people had pensions in those years before Social Security.

Now, the federal government says we have an estimated 14.8 million unemployed, out of a work force of about 154 million. But that number is artificially lower than in the Great Depression because 33 million senior citizens are on Social Security — and not seeking jobs as they were then. An additional 7.4 million adults receive disability payments under Social Security, and some would also have been seeking work in 1933.

But that’s not all. We have a far larger standing military than in 1933 — about 1 percent of the work force, or 1.4 million men and women.

Another 1.6 million people are in jails and prisons, a near-record amount, and again a larger percentage of able-bodied U.S. residents than in 1933. They are excluded from the statistics today.

In other words, 43.4 million people are paid for government employment in the military, or supported through government programs. If added to the jobless numbers, it equals about 58 million people.

…The big difference now is that despair is masked. Social Security and the expansions of unemployment insurance mean that people are able to keep the wolf from the door. The bread lines of the 1930s are food banks.

…Maybe that’s one reason why the American people are so angry at their leaders. They know that many of the government statistics are often just statistical sleight-of-hand.

Kirstin Downey
Politico.com

Pension and Retirement Statistics

...America's 100 largest corporate pension plans
were underfunded by $217 billion at the end of 2008.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
says that the number of pensions at risk inside failing companies
more than tripled during the recession.

...state and local government bodies in the state of California
have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities

...it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in California.

...California's three biggest pension funds
are as much as $500 billion short of meeting future retiree benefit obligations.

...the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System
is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of total collapse.

...the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations,
but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds.

That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars.

...the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits
than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010.

That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.

...Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011
consists of direct payments to individual Americans
or is money that is spent on their behalf.

...interest costs on the U.S. national debt
plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs
...will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019.

Approximately half of all workers in the United States
have less than $2000 saved up for retirement.

...36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything at all
to retirement savings.

35% of Americans over the age of 65
rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone.

Michael Snyder
theeconomiccollapseblog.com

On employment benchmark revisions and a falling unemployment rate coincident with fewer jobs created

Did you react to the positive jobs trend initially announced in September - October 2009? Oops, it was really a greater loss than expected, and not a gain at all. One can only suspect that in a few years this whole recovery could be revised away without so much as a bureaucratic blush.

The change is pervasive. One item of note is the taking of more job losses in the earlier years, setting up a stable base for potential job gains in the present, without embarrassing oneself by getting out of synchronization with the actual growth of the civilian population. There will be more 'truing up' of the numbers in the future.

Regarding that 'surprise drop' in unemployment to 9.7%, this is the result of people falling off the unemployment benefits radar, and becoming discouraged. It is essentially meaningless, if not downright misleading.

Jesse's Café Américain

A lot of people are questioning the unemployment rate of 9.7% in the face of a –20,000 non-farm payroll print.  How could we be losing jobs and have the unemployment rate drop?

...Bottom line: the unemployment rate downtick...is a statistical aberration due entirely to seasonal adjustments in the household survey in the number of people employed and unemployed.

Edward Harrison
Credit Writedowns