Stunning Truth

“Czar Point,” a regular commenter on the Economic Edge, http://economicedge.blogspot.com/ gave two very pointed posts on how he views the numbers inside this morning’s employment report. The numbers are STUNNING, and they are the TRUTH. Math does not lie and cannot be spun… statistics can be, but not simple math. Point simply takes out his calculator and adds them up. You will be shocked…

I'm going to add a little to the employment situation summary. All numbers are raw, not adjusted.

The civilian labor force dropped by a mind-boggling 1.28 million in September from August, with 235 thousand people being added to the workforce. The participation rate plunged .6% to 65.0%.

The employment-population ratio - the TRUE measure of employment in this nation - fell to 58.9%. The actual number of the unemployed rose by 285 thousand, while those not in the labor force jumped by 1.516 million.

And unemployment for those aged 16-19 years old skyrocketed in September to 25.8% from 24.2% in August. For this age group, the emp-pop ratio is just 26.2% with the participation rate falling off the cliff, from 40.7% to 35.3%.

This, by far, is THE WORST employment situation report I have ever read. Bar none.
I ran the numbers on how many jobs we have actually lost since December 2007 - the beginning of the recession-cum-depression - and how many jobs we'd have to create each and every month for the next two years just to return to November 2007 levels…

I hope you are sitting down, have a good stiff drink at your side, and no firearms or sharp objects are within reach. And all small children are safely stowed away.

Jobs lost in the past 22 months total 8,039,000, while the non-institutionalized civilian adult population (i.e. those not in prison, or a mental hospital, etc.) has risen by 3,166,000. This brings the ACTUAL jobs lost number to 11,205,000.

Now, dividing 3.166m by 22 months roughly equals 144,000. This is the number of jobs that have to be created every month in order to keep up with the growth in population; taken times 24, this gives us 3,456,000 additional jobs that need to be created to keep up with population growth between now and September 2011.

Added together, this means we need to have 14,661,000 - or an average of 610,000 - jobs added to the economy by the above date to reach par with November 2007.

There you go. The V-shaped recovery and green shoots simultaneously detonated...

BOOM!

There you have it. The truth behind the numbers that your government presents but will not talk about. The “media” will not dig and also will not discuss it – they are both fooling themselves and the general (under/ unemployed) population…