21 Nov Everything IS terrible!
Photo by Rendy Novantino on Unsplash
“Wages are rising. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody’s happy.
It’s a good time to be a worker and a bad time to be a consumer — the problem is most people are both.”
–https://www.vox.com/2023/11/20/23964535/labor-market-employment-inflation-sentiment-economy-bad-polls published on November 20, 2023
*Looks around like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction* Where is this now? Where are wages rising and jobs are plentiful? Is this the job market on Neptune?
“Explaining the state of the American economy at the moment is a conundrum. The labor market is good — as is much of the economy — and people say that everything is terrible.”
-Vox, Ibid.
*closes eyes and pinches nose à la Stan Marsh*
IMO, there’s no conundrum here, especially to middle class, working class, and working poor people. Is it possible, dear MSM, that people feel like everything is terrible BECAUSE IT F**KING IS?
AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH.
(⬆️ Sara’s primal scream)
I’m so tired of the gaslighting, man. So tired. “Everything is great, so, like, why are y’all plebs whining?” 😖
“The past couple of years have been a solid stretch for workers in America. Unemployment is low. People who want to find jobs, by and large, can. Wages are up — even accounting for inflation over the past several months, and especially for people at the lower ends of the income spectrum. Workers really have been able to flex their muscles, whether that means quitting their jobs or unionizing or going on strike.”
-Vox, Ibid.
A solid stretch? Really? Let’s take this one piece at a time:
A solid stretch – Nyet. It was an overheated, artificially manipulated job market like the overheated, artificially manipulated housing market. When we’re told to stay home due to a global death flu on what planet does it make sense for realtors to remain essential workers? Doctors and nurses? Yes. Police and fire? Yes. But realtors? Gimme a break! I’ve compared the job market to the housing market before and with reason. The same FOMO and YOLO we saw with housing we saw in the job market. 2021 was insane. I was constantly busy, even at the holidays. I knew it wouldn’t last and I knew it wasn’t normal. There’s a difference between workers making real strides versus workers trying to ride the wave of an artificial boom cycle.
Unemployment is low – Each time I still hear this, I wanna barf. Shadow Stats puts it at about 25%. I would guess it’s probably somewhere around 15 to 20% based on what I see day in and day out in the job market. In no way do I believe it’s 3.9%. Nuh-uh. When you go to layoffs.fyi and see new announcements each day, sorry, I don’t believe unemployment is low. Add to that all the layoff announcements littered in the MSM’s own outlets and I don’t think any sane person could come up with a number like 3.9%.
People who want to find jobs, by and large, can – Oh really? Go look at comments on LinkedIn and Reddit of people who’ve been unemployed for months. I recorded a bonus episode around this topic: “Tuesday Night Special: ‘It’s been far more difficult finding employment than I expected‘”
When I go to Google Trends and type in “can’t find a job,” here’s what I see from November 2022 to now:
100 on this scale = what Google defines as “peak popularity” for a term.
Does this level of interest in people not able to find work suggest to you that people who want a job can, like, find one pretty easy?
Wages are up – Have your wages kept pace with inflation? I bet not a single one of you is nodding your head in affirmation right now. The MSM might be desperate to try to convince John & Jane Q. Public of this nonsense, but no one believes it.
“As of December, the typical U.S. adult had experienced 6.1% wage growth in the prior 12 months, which is near the highest level it has been in the past decade, according to the Atlanta Fed.
For comparison, median wage growth was 3.6% in 2019. However, the annual inflation rate was only about 2% in 2019, which is far lower than the 6.5% rate in December 2022. That means median real wage growth for all workers was -0.4% at the end of 2022, whereas it was positive from 2011 up until inflation jumped in 2021.”
–https://money.com/get-new-job-raise-outpace-inflation/ emphasis mine
Stats can be manipulated to reflect anything. A 6.1% wage growth sounds good by comparison but when you look closer, you’ll see it’s not the amazing gain you’re supposed to believe it is. Inflation is theft.
Workers really have been able to flex their muscles – This is another bit of hopium, IMO. I recently tackled this topic over on the job market journal. Leftists want you to believe that striking or walking off the job has the same power it did in the 1920s, yet the actual hard evidence shows otherwise. As with voting, if going on strike or staging a walk-out really changed Corpo America, we wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
“And yet, amid all this, poll after poll shows that Americans say the economy is absolutely awful (what Americans do in this supposedly awful economy is a different thing, which we’ll get to later). That such a strong labor market isn’t making a dent, opinion-wise, is a little weird. It seems like this jobs landscape should make the public feel better. So why do people say it doesn’t?”
-Vox, Ibid.
It’s not weird to me. All of these items only appear contradictory if you believe the BLS stats and politicians and “economists” who assure you the economy is rrrrresilient and the labor market is rrrrobust. Once you assume that garbage is pure BS, it all makes sense. Imagine if you went to the dentist with a throbbing toothache and they said, “No, you don’t have a toothache. There is no pain. Go home and go on with your life.” For one thing, you could wind up with an abscess that could kill you. But how long could you really ignore that pain and say, “Well, I mean, hell. The dentist told me I have no pain.” The polls show that Americans are unhappy with this sh!tty economy because it’s a sh!tty economy. 🤷🏻♀️
“Why do people feel like this? A lot of it is perception”
-Vox, Ibid.
And there’s the rub. That’s what it is. “PERCEPTION.” Remember in Gaslight when Charles Boyer says things like, “If I could only get inside that brain of yours and understand what makes you do these crazy, twisted things.” He wants his wife to doubt her own senses and her own brain by telling her all sorts of wacky things – even that she is a kleptomaniac though she is not.
Why do you feel like the economy and the job market are in the sh!tter? Well, dear, it’s surely just your perception. You know how forgetful you are. You know how you fly off the handle about things. You need to simply trust what the MSM and the politicians and their bought-and-paid-for economists tell you, darling.
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