So That’s Where Those Jobs Came From – 140,000 Census Jobs Skew Statistics
Aha! The missing link in the employment report has been found. After Wall Street celebrated relative success with last month’s employment report, you would have expected that traders found gold. Instead its fools gold, all the gains in employment that we have been seeing are merely the result of the once-a-decade census report.
The employment report may have come as a success to traders but when you really get down to the number crunching it was nothing more than a one time boost. As part of an effort to count every person that lives in the United States (why?) the US government has hired 140,000 TEMPORARY workers. These workers will be employed for one maybe two months at maximum then return to the unemployment line.
These are troubling times, and I fear that the the rush into employment will only be made worse when these people go back to being unemployed. Consider that none of these positions are long term and all will be terminated in a few short weeks or months. At which point we will have practically borrowed from this unemployment report and pay the dues when the next few employment reports come out.
When you get down to it, this month’s employment report was only improved by 19,000 jobs, a number that is statistically irrelevant when you consider the number of jobs that are gained and lost on a daily basis.
The fact of the matter is this, this recession is not over, the recent bull run is pure inflation, and anyone who thinks otherwise is going to lose their shirt. Each month we stay in the red is another month more families go broke, more people default on mortgages and more businesses go under. There is no better time NOT to invest than now. Stick with what’s safe, stick with what you know, and protect your assets against the grip of inflation.
