163,000 Jobs Created In July? What A Pile Of Bullshit...

Wondering how the economy managed to created 163,000 new jobs in July, as the Department of Labor announced last Friday, while all the evidence around you - boarded-up storefronts, declining sales, increased  first-time unemployment claims - seems a bit counterfactual to that figure?

The answer to your confusion (and mine) is simple.  In an act of unprecedented partisan hackery  (by this particular department of government, anyway), Labor wantonly, and without explanation, altered the statistics to create a more positive employment picture in order for Barack Obama to campaign on an improving economy.

John Crudele, in the New York Post, lays it out:

I analyzed Labor’s latest employment numbers last Saturday and found that its total of 163,000 new jobs for July included 52,000 phantom jobs.
The phantom jobs, contained under Labor’s somewhat arcane and usually overlooked Birth/Death Model, are nothing new. The Birth/Death Model allows Washington to guess at the number of jobs created or lost in the crevices of society where they are hard to prove.

You see, phantom job numbers can vary a lot. In April, 206,000 phantom jobs were created, with 204,000 added in May and 124,000 in June. In fact, 400,000 of the total jobs created this year were phantom jobs. So far, so good.

But the 52,000 figure for July was very unusual. In July, 2011, Labor subtracted 18,000 phantom jobs; the prior July saw 38,000 phantom jobs deducted. In July 2009 — you guessed it — 10,000 phantom jobs disappeared.

In fact, you can go all the way back to when the Birth/Death Model began in 2000 and you won’t see a figure anywhere close to the 52,000 jobs added to last Friday’s numbers...


Subtract Labor's 52,000 "new job"s from the July total, and you have 111,000 new jobs in July, a modest improvement from the last two months but still nothing to really crow about.  Now if you take even the middle number of the last three years of negative July adjustments - 18,000 - and apply it to that 111,000 figure, you are down to a June employment number of a mere 93,000 new jobs created.  Which is probably somewhat closer to the truth, if even still a bit high...

But that 93,000 figure also creates an unmistakable trend of anemic job growth under the economic policies of Barack Obama.  Which would hurt his re-election chances tremendously, heading into "convention season".

So the Department of Labor lied to the American people in order to give Barack Obama something to crow about.

Feel better now?

Just remember - whenever the evidence of your eyes does not match that of the government propaganda that the media is blaring out at you, all you need to do is remind yourself:

This is Hope, this is Change...