TOP POST - WHAT ARE COMMUNITY IS READING
SURREAL ECONOMICS OR CONCRETE SCIENCE? Original Post It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it wa...
Gallup Is Right: The Unemployment Rate Is A Big Lie
On Friday Feb. 6th the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent. This sounds great on the surface, but Gallops CEO said it best; the unemployment rate is a big lie.
According to Gallop CEO Jim Clifton, if one hasn’t been working for four weeks or actively looking for work, they aren’t counted as unemployed. Also, if you work one hour a week, or get paid at least $20.00 a week, you aren’t counted as unemployed. This explains why 30 million Americans are out of work or severely unemployed.
What also helps explain the low unemployment rate is that nearly 22 million Americans are under employed. This means is, that if you are working part time because you’re unable to find full time work, you’re still counted as employed. Or if you have a PHD or Masters, but work as a cashier, you are considered employed.
The BLS also counts part time and temporary work as jobs created. Currently, 44% of Americans work 30 hours or more a week. Most people in Human Resources (HR) consider a full time job 40 hours or more. If a company hires 2 temporary workers, and lays off a full time worker, the BLS counts that as one job created.
As an example of this, in the June 2014 jobs report, 523,000 full time jobs were lost, but 799,000 part time jobs were created. This netted a gain of over 300,000 jobs.
In fact since the “recovery” began, most of the jobs created were part time. In 2013, 75% of the total jobs created were part time jobs. This is why two-thirds of Americans are now living pay check to paycheck.
These doctored up numbers aren’t the only reason the unemployment rate has declined. Look at this labor participation rate chart from the BLS.
Global Recession? The Canadian Economy Shrinks At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis
Things have not been this bad for the Canadian economy since the last global recession. During the second quarter of 2016, Canada’s GDP contracted at a 1.6 percent annualized rate. That was the worst number in seven years, and it was even worse than most analysts were projecting. This comes at a time when bad news is pouring in from all corners of the global economy. While things in the United States are still relatively stable for the moment, the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the planet. Canada in particular has been hit very hard by the collapse in oil prices, and the massive wildfire in northern Alberta back in May certainly did not help things. The following comes from the BBC…
The recent drop in GDP was larger than analysts had projected, but not far off the predicted 1.5% loss.
“[The figure] could have been worse, given the hit from the wildfire, and clearly confirms the disappointing downward trend in exports over the last few months,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.
In May, wildfires devastated the parts of northern Alberta where much of Canada’s oil and natural gas is produced.
For many years, high oil prices and booming exports enabled the Canadian economy to significantly outperform the U.S. economy. But now conditions have changed dramatically, and all of the economic bubbles up in Canada are starting to burst. This includes the housing bubble, as we have seen home sales in the hottest markets such as Vancouver drop through the floor late in the summer. In fact, it is being reported that home sales during the first two weeks of August in British Columbia were down a whopping 51 percent on a year over year basis.
Do you remember the housing bubble in the U.S. that helped fuel the last financial crisis? Well, a very similar bubble is now bursting up in Canada, and some investors have positioned themselves to make a tremendous amount of money when the whole thing comes violently crashing down. The following comes from Wolf Richter…
This summer, famed short seller Marc Cohodes came out of retirement (he now raises chickens on a farm in Sonoma County, CA, and sells the eggs for a fortune in San Francisco) and jumped into ring with a number of interviews on TV and in the print media, and this too rattled some nerves – largely because it hit home.
“I think it’s a money laundering-induced market,” he said as we reported at the time. “Where the local politicians, or the BC Liberals, are kept or in cahoots
with the real estate brokers, developers, lawyers, that angle. And they have sought Chinese money to keep the market propped up and it won’t last,” he said. “China has capital controls on, and Vancouver has become the money laundering mecca of either the world or North America, and something is going to change and change drastically.
The Economic Collapse
