Screameth The Bureau of Lies and Scams

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 315,000 in August, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade.

Notable job gains while the unemployment rate increased?

Well now, do we know everything we need to know from just two sentences?  Maybe.

On an unadjusted basis the number was -353,000.  It is important to note that August does frequently show this sort of number, because people in school go back and some of them were working.  Thus, that's unremarkable.

In other words the economic read is that its "meh"; flat would be the best word, neither recessionary or expansionary.

What is remarkable is that we still are screwing people in health care with 48,000 more financial hosing positions added.  Ok, let's be fair, 4,800 of them were probably doctors and nurses; the rest were dedicated to bending you over the table.  Oh by the way that's about 400,000 over the last 12 months.

Average hourly earnings were up 10 cents but basically zero in goods producing, and in non-durable goods they were down.  How's that work out for you in a high inflation environment?  Not so good, I suspect.

100,000 fake jobs were admitted to for June, but of course that was two months ago which wildly exceeds the attention span of the American population.

The market like this, presumably believing that Powell and The Fed will truncate the interest rate increases.

They're wrong; if inflation does not get stomped on those in manufacturing will be living in a refrigerator box shortly, at which point the entire economy will collapse.  So yes, the rate increases will continue until prices reverse back to where they were, not just stop going up.

This is a bad number -- especially on the back of last month's report.

The unemployment rate declined to 3.7 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 134,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.

This is utterly nasty and the drop in the unemployment rate is entirely due to an increase in the NILF figure -- people who have left the workforce.

Let's look inside:

In a word: Meh.

The 12 month change is below 2m.  The rate has been over 2m for roughly the last year, but now it is solidly below.  That's bad news, because the increase in working-age population is approximately 2 million, so if you can't manage to put up that number on a 12 month rolling basis you are losing ground.

Heh, look at that "formal unemployment rate" -- it's a multi-generational low.  But does it mean anything?

Not really since there the employment:population ratio is nowhere near the 1969 figures.  Having an "unemployment rate" that is extremely low because people aren't looking for jobs but are either sucking off public assistance or otherwise out of the workforce isn't positive -- it's negative since only working people pay taxes.

Have you looked at the annualized "debt to the penny" figures lately?  No?  Well maybe you should.  I'll help you out with that in the next few days in my usual annual report on exactly how much bullshit Washington DC has emitted into the "economy" and thus the fraud embedded in the GDP "expansion" rate.

Once again having a Bachelors or better did not outperform; all of the educational categories gained, but both high school dropouts and degree-holders managed one tick of advancement.  "Some College" and High School graduates both gained more, however, meaning that once again we are making McJobs and not, as is often said, positions for the "highly educated."

There are also indications of slack in the part-time statistics but this month I ignore them because of Florence.  If they persist into next month, however, they are likely an early indication of a negative turn in the economy and employment situation.

We shall see.