The Fed wouldn’t have to finesse its outlook for the economy if things were really going well.
As I’ve mentioned several times in the past week — and thousands of times over the years — the Labor Department boosts its springtime employment numbers by using assumptions about new jobs that should be created, even though these positions might not really exist.
Friday’s 195,000 improvement in the job market, for instance, probably included about 20,000 to 30,000 of these phantom jobs after seasonal adjustments.
And while the unemployment rate that gets the most attention remained unchanged at a lofty 7.6 percent, the broader measure of underemployment jumped a whopping 0.5 percentage points to 14.3 percent.
That’s because part-time employment rose by 360,000 in the month, while full-time jobs declined 240,000. Part-time employment was 557,000 higher than it was the year before, while full-time jobs have risen only 130,000 from June 2013.
I believe he means “from June 2012” in that last sentence, which is a succinct a damnation of this “recovery” as you’ll ever see.
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