Unemployment shot up from 6.8% to 7.2% last month. Bad, huh? Yup, but that’s not the real number. Not even close.
What is more, our favorite measure of unemployment, U-6, which gives a very wide view of the ranks of the involuntarily idled, climbed to a new high of 13.5%, up from 12.6% in November and 8.7% in December ’07.
But the lying liars in DC can’t leave it at that, oh no.
The boys and girls at the BLS are still valiantly “creating” jobs, even while real live, flesh-and-blood employers are busily handing out pink slips. Thus, through the magic of the infamous birth/death model that purports to capture employment trends at the new and deceased companies that its regular surveys miss, no fewer than 70,000 jobs were confected out of thin air in December.
These numbers are, of course, fictitious. Why do they even bother with the pretense of announcing numbers everyone knows are fraudulent?
Because we are few, Bob, and the ignorant, the incapacitated, consumers of the Ambein, Prosaic, television and Viagra Kool-Aid Kocktail, are many. Many. More.
They buy the bullshit lock, stock and barrel, and we shake our heads in no longer amused amazement. Truly fodder in the natural selection process.