Our problem is NOT unemployment, or it is NOT housing. Our problem is debt. And we have more of it now! When we borrow, banks create new money. This inflates the money supply and causes an economic boom:

http://www.tradingstocks.net/ html/banks_create_money.html

We borrow from the future. In the old days America has borrowed from the future. Do you read that? The future is here. The good days were moved from today, to the past!

Todal public debt debt per household is around 200K USD. That is more than the average home price in America. What does that mean? It means even if you paid your mortgage, you still owe as much as an average house!

The private debt is even worse! Our entire money supply is borrowed money. When we borrowed, we promised to pay back with interest! Principal + interest does not exist. Therefore it is not possible to earn it to pay it back with interest! That is why previously fine individuals and businesses are going bankrupt! the crash is built into the monetary system. It cannot be avoided. There is no free lunch. What was borrowed from the future will be paid back. Here is the debt problem that is causing deflation:

http://www.tradingstocks.net/ html/inflation_deflation_credit_bub.html

Let us say when we borrowed 50 trillion, we promised to pay back 100 trillion. The economy is built on the assumption that the money supply would some day reach 100 trillion. That could happen if borrowing continued. But there is a catch! The real economy cannot sustain the interest payments on debt if debt keeps increasing exponentially. That is why the deflationary crash has started.

After sub-prime, we exhausted borrowers. There is no one left to borrow. Baby boomers are beyond their peak spending years. Money supply is deflating. 100 trillion will not exist and the economy that is built on that assumption will have to shrink back to lower levels, 40, 30, 20 trillion. Whatever the money supply shall be at the bottom.

All prices around you, homes, stocks, pickles, salaries, everything is based on this inflated money supply. When the money supply fails to expand under the weight of excessive debt, current prices and salaries cannot be sustained. People are asking, where is the next bubble? The bubble is the debt. Debt is the money supply. We borrowed all we could and we created all money we could and it is deflating now! Prepare for the biggest crash the world has ever seen! Great Depression is nothing compared to this bubble!

http://www.tradingstocks.net/ html/prepare_for_market_crash.html

People think this is all Obama's fault. No folks, this is the mistake of 70 years. The mistake was to inflate the credit bubble for decades. The cause is in place. The effect will follow. Credit will deflate! That makes a deflationary depression. That is because we will stop borrowing and we will start paying off debt and start saving. That is a good thing. Depression is the fix! Once we are done with it, we can grow and prosper again. Here is a free report that lists other deflationary forces for 2010:

http://www.tradingstocks.net/ html/2010_stock_market_forecast.html

are welfare recipients considered government employees? If not, how or where are they counted ? employed, unemployed,under employed, ramora, no longer looking, never going to look, or secret agents?

I must profess that most of the comments discrediting (and supporting) the unemployment data make sense on some level. Goes to my simplicity I guess.;-)

But I wonder this...if the weekly employment numbers failed to add (or lose) even one job over the next 52 weeks...i.e. net=0 for 1 year. What would the headline unemployment number be relative to now? Higher, lower or the same?

Thanks

The BLS just revised its job loss figures,increasing the number of job losses in "the great recession" by almost 900,000,.....and the unemployment rate went down. How is that possible?

Maybe the title of this article should have been "Employment Report Confirms that Government Statistics are Unreliable". They seem to be getting even less reliable. Sometimes it seems like they are just made up; after all, 62.7% of statistics are just made up.

Two numbers that the BLS cannot adjust or manipulate away are the labor participation rate and tax receipts. Both of these numbers continue to plummet at alarming rates (labor participation after a brief bear flag sideways movement in mid-2009.

Yes, things are getting better and better every day and in every way. Never mind China's housing and CRE bubble. Never mind the PIIGS credit collapse. Never mind the millions of foreclosures to come in 2010. Never mind the continued weak hours average worked numbers. Never mind collapsing US consumer credit. Never mind that 40 states are in dire fiscal straits. Never mind that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all about to go cash flow negative years before their predicted failure. Never mind that public pensions are underfunded to the tune of trillions of dollars. Never mind that GDP would have been negative but for inventory rebuilding and massive government stimulus. Never mind the expiration of the tax cuts that will hit small business like a ton of bricks.

The Fed and the Treasury proxies buying up all the UST's every month. Public debt is exploding and none of the revenue offsets proposed in the new budget stand a snowball's chance in heck of making it out of the appropriations process.

Yes, Inspector Clouseau, we're getting better and better in every way (nervous giggle, involuntary facial tick).

Amol,

The weekly employment number is not net, so it is not apropos.

As far as the monthly non-farm payrolls number, it needs to rise by at least 100k just for the unemployment rate to hold steady.

When unemployment reaches 100% Mr. Kostohryz will announce that it is GREAT news as employment then has no where to go but up!

Actually, the way government statisitics are collected and calculated even if every man, woman and child wasn't working unemployment would still reported at about 50% due to 'discouraged workers' or some such nonsense.

This 'unemployment report' is just one more example of how language is now used to confuse and manipulate data rather than help provide a clearer picture of what's happening in the economy. I believe Mr. Kostohryz missed his true calling as a goverment employee. Its not too late for such a carrer change and i believe it would only be a matter of months before someone with his ability to obfucate and cheerlead would be made czar or some department or other.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the number I saw was a loss of 1.2 million more jobs than previously estimated. I also thought the revision only covered thru March 2009 so another revision will be coming for the period April 09 thru March 2010. I would certainly consider the loss of an addtional 1.2 million jobs to be an outrageous number. It would certainly seem that the governments birth/death model needs to be discarded.

Since these numbers are seasonally adjusted just what 'weather anomaly' are you referring to?

The idea that actual retail employment rose last month is preposterous and a good example of why these reports, including their supposed details cannot be taken at face value.
Retail employment normally drops sharply in January as a lot of jobs in that sector, primarily seasonal, are cut; this year & last, store-and entire chain- closings helped increase that as well. The payroll job model 'knows' this and applies a large 'seasonal adjustment factor' that adds back jobs against the reality of losses
to seasonally smooth the output. This year,seasonal hiring was so low, the weakest in a couple of decades vs labor pool,and prior closing/layoffs throughout 2009 had slashed the in place work force enough so that actual layoffs in January were relatively pretty low vs. 'normal'. The adjustment factor still jammed a large # of jobs back into the model so, voila!, retail jobs rose-and by a fairly large one month number at that-in the payroll model. In reality-no.

Indeed! The amount of obfuscation in these numbers defies credulity.

Mr. Kostohryz states that private manufacturing jobs rose while "Ironically", total government employment fell but he fails to mention that most of these new manufacturing jobs were in the automotive industry WHERE the government now owns GM.

Without the massive government subsidies to automobile companies just how many new manufacturing jobs would have been created. Employment numbers are becoming such a joke that the public should demand a ROI report to make sure we aren't just turning billions of dollars into millions and calling it progress.

In addition, while a single months data may indicate government jobs are falling I think further examination would show that over the past year the number of government jobs have exploded relative to private jobs and since private jobs supposedly provide the financing for public jobs how is this positive or sustainable?

The government and these cheerleader pundits apparently believe the solution to all our economic woes is for us all to believe (really, really hard) that this kind of nonsense that says we can lose jobs and yet have 'unemployment' fall makes sense. Soon even the uneducated and disinterested masses will come to understand that lies don't represent solutions.