10 Feb “Eye-popping jobs report”
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An eye-popping jobs report. Yeah, I’d say so. Eye popping in how bogus it is, in my opinion.
“The resilience of the labor market in the face of rising interest rates and stubborn inflation continues to surprise economists. The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January, pushing the unemployment rate to a 53-year low of just 3.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.” –https://finance.yahoo.com/news/january-eye-popping-jobs-report-182256374.html
Wow. Does that seem correct to you? Does it feel like unemployment is at 3.4% and is the lowest it’s been in more than 50 years?
“While the job gains are great news for the economy as a whole, for the Federal Reserve—which has been trying to quash inflation with interest rate hikes for nearly a year—they could be another roadblock in its war to lower inflation.
‘Job creation in January was eye-popping,’ said BMO Wealth Management’s chief investment strategist, Yung-Yu Ma. ‘Unless this labor market strength turns out to be a one-month blip…the Fed is likely to dig in and keep rates higher for longer.’ -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
Are these supposed gains good for the economy as a whole? Can the American economy be sustained by everyone working in fast food, retail, or hospitality? I don’t think so!
*slips on tinfoil hat*
Ya know, it seems much more plausible to me that these hyped up numbers are being used for a couple of important things:
–https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fed-interest-rate-hikes-unemployment-increase-layoffs-inflation/
–https://theintercept.com/2022/07/29/bank-of-america-worker-conditions-worse/
Kinda seems to me that these inflated numbers can be used as justification for The Fed to keep hiking rates under the guise of “Golly gosh, y’all. We gotta cool off this hot labor market” and with a nice fringe benefit of taking the power away from the serfs and returning it to Corpo America.
Even people who have no expertise in the job market are waking up and saying, “Uh, this feels manufactured.” YES. EXACTLY.
“In order to cool the economy, Fed officials have raised interest rates eight times since March of last year. And in December, the evidence of their work started to show when year-over-year inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, fell to 6.5%—from 9.1% at its June peak. But Ronald Temple, chief market strategist at investment bank Lazard, told Fortune that the latest jobs report shows the ‘inflation battle is far from over.’
‘The labor market is extremely tight,’ he said. ‘The clear takeaway for the Fed should be that financial conditions remain too loose to ensure inflation will return to the 2% target.'” -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
See? These conditions are just too loosey-goosey. More work is needed! The Fed clearly must keep hiking those rates.
“Raymond James chief economist Eugenio Aleman told Fortune that while the latest jobs report is ‘excellent news’ for the U.S. economy, it is ‘probably not good news’ for investors or the Fed, ‘which wants to see employment weakening considerably before it concludes its interest rate increases.’ . . .
Recession predictions have poured in from Wall Street, Fortune 500 CEOs, and billionaire investors over the past year, but the recent surprising strength in the labor market data has some experts arguing that the Fed could manage a ‘soft landing’ after all—where inflation comes down without sparking a recession.
‘The extraordinary flexibility and adaptability inherent in the U.S. labor markets…has lent further credence to the potential that a soft landing for the economy is not as elusive as many have suggested,’ BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income, Rick Rieder, told Fortune Friday.” -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
I wouldn’t personally bet on a soft landing for all this, just as I wouldn’t bet that remote work is here to stay for everyone across the board. IMO, this is more hopium being given to the unwashed masses as if to say, “Hush little baby. Don’t worry about it. The overlords are in charge and they’ll do what’s best.”
“But lately, economists have noted that measuring the health of the economy is becoming increasingly challenging owing to conflicting data.
‘It’s a pretty confused picture,’ former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told Bloomberg Friday. ‘The labor market is running very differently than lots of other indicators in the economy where there are some signs—particularly in manufacturing—of real slowing…I think it’s as difficult an economy to read as I can remember.'” -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
To me, it’s less confusing if you assume some of these numbers are total bull💩. It’s only confusing if you: ignore what you can see and hear for yourself, assume the “official” numbers are true, assume we’re in a red hot labor market in spite of mass layoffs, etc.
As I said at the beginning: all of this is only eye popping if you believe it.
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