If you've been keeping up with un-employment figures, here's something for you to chew on. . .

Hidden in the numbers.  

No doubt there are people who see this week's BLS Non-Farm Payroll survey as "not good, but not all that bad either".
But unfortunately, this is all smoke, mirrors, bias and outright falsehood.

That said, while many citizens may still be fooled by the official data, you can bet that Washington knows perfectly well what the real numbers are, and many hours of backroom meetings are dedicated to the topic. How much of that reflects genuine care for constituencies, and how much mere worry about election numbers, we’ll leave up to you to ponder.

It’s not just the magnitude of the job declines but how widespread they are that is disturbing.

the reality is that nobody is hiring, especially in the small business sector

Today’s U.S. nonfarm payroll report, when you consider how many barbiturates the government has supplied the economy, can only be described as horrible.

In fact, the U6 measure of joblessness, which captures all the various degrees of unemployment and underemployment, rose to 17.3% from 17.2% and is flirting with the highest levels ever for this series. ( a more honest way to quantify the jobless rate but still not completely honest.  Add 10 points to these figures and that might be close.)

But here’s the problem — the country has never before managed to come close to creating that number of jobs over a half-decade period, so what the future holds is one of ongoing deflationary labour market pressure as far as the eye can see.

We started the decade with a national payroll level of 130.8 million. We finished the decade practically unchanged at 130.9 million. Meanwhile, the total pool of available labour rose from 146 million to 159 million. In other words, we have the same number of jobs today as we did a decade ago, and yet we also have 13 million more people competing for them.

Massive Jump In Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Benefits - Up 43% In One Month!