The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the December jobs report today [DATA HERE] showing 223,000 jobs gained in December ’22.
Most of the job growth was in the “leisure and hospitality” sector (+67,000), healthcare (+55,000), construction (+28,000) and social assistance (+20,000). Additionally, average hourly earnings rose by 0.3%, with a year-over-year measure of wage growth at 4.6%.
At this point in the history of our economic pretending game, we are well aware the employment numbers are heavily manipulated in order to support the government policymaking that is destroying the same workforce they claim to represent. It’s all a ruse, just look around your community and you will see what I am talking about.
The financial pundits, Wall Street, government policy makers and various individuals and economic gaslighters are concerned that worker wage growth could drive inflation. This is one of the most aggravating aspects to reviewing the majority of economic punditry. [Example:]
This knuckleheaded narrative engineer from the New York Times/Atlantic even has the audacity to say, “let prices continue to fall to target,” as if there is a single item at any price that is dropping. His spin is a good example of gaslighting just from the use of the statement “price inflation is falling back towards where we want it.”
Price inflation is not price. ‘Price inflation’ is the rate of increase. There’s a BIG DIFFERENCE between “inflation falling back” and prices dropping. Inflation falling back is merely a lessening of the rate of price increase. The price does not drop, and never will.
This reality is why it is infuriating to see government policymakers and pundits decry wage growth as a bad thing that might cause inflation.
Government monetary, fiscal and energy policy created inflation. Devalued currency from spending, simultaneous to massive government policy changes driving up supply side energy costs, exploded inflation.
Prices for energy, oil, gas, home heating, fuel and food all skyrocketed as a result. Workers need pay raises to afford these essential costs of life. However, the same people who created the inflation are now worried that wage rate increases may drive inflation. The mindset at work here is infuriating.
Consider these empirical data points. In August of 2021 the Biden administration permanently increased food stamp benefits by 25% for everyone who needed the subsidy {LINK}. This permanent benefit increase was delivered at the same time as the administration was claiming “inflation was transitory.” They knew it wasn’t transitory. They were lying.
The Social Security Benefits were also raised in 2022 by 8.7% for the largest ever cost of living adjustment in 2023 {LINK}. Both the 25% food stamp increase and the 8.7% SSI COLA were needed to offset the inflation created by government policy…. However, the same government doesn’t want wages to rise. Can you see the hypocrisy.
Workers are being crushed by the outcomes of policy, and those who created the policy making the outcomes do not want worker wages to offset the policy.
We need to see wage growth in the 20% range just to keep pace with the increased cost of living created by policy. Food costs 40% more, energy 30% more, housing 20% more and the list keeps going.
The prices for many goods have already doubled, worker wages need to compensate for those increases. However, government, Wall Street, corporations and policy makers do not want to see wage growth that will offset the price of goods because they fear those wage gains will drive inflation.
The financial media, Wall Street, govt policy makers (republican & democrats) and corporations are lying to us and simultaneously killing the working-class. We, the workforce, are in an abusive relationship with govt…. and they have the nerve to blame us for inflation.
Our food costs +40%, energy +30%, housing +20%, all of it.. with interest rates now climbing, making it worse. Yet, they now clutch pearls and worry about our need for higher wages to afford these costs (from their policy) driving inflation higher?
Yet we are supposed to be concerned about giving an entitled republican control of the speaker position in congress because.. why?
Probably the same reason they want us looking at Ukraine, or transgender issues, or queer/gay rights, or climate change, or (fill_in_the_blank with something Ron DeSantis is promoting) all to keep us from realizing our economic life is being destroyed all around us while this constant and insufferable game of pretending continues.
A pox on all their houses!
I hate them all right now.
A family of 4 in Wyoming makes $80k in free money.
Wow why would anyone who worked retail or at Jiffy Lube or some such work?
Link?
I read this week:
“In New Jersey, for instance, a family of four with no one working can receive unemployment benefits equivalent to a job paying over $96,000. That’s more than the median household earns in wages and benefits combined.”
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/big-welfare-handouts-mean-folks-who-stay-home-living-high-hog-off-your-tax-dollars#cobssid=s
But they don’t tell you who qualifies, not just any ol’ down on their luck folks get to waltz in and out of the Benefits Office with fat paychecks. Sidebar: With so many NY/NJ pensioners(underfunded/unfunded pensions) moving to Florida and buying property, I wonder what kind of bubble burst we can expect when these funds are bankrupted by these kind of insane policies?
Most of the pensioners buying homes in Florida bought with cash. They may struggle with food, electric and gasoline bills, but, they will be better off than young folks who bought homes at the peak and lose their jobs. Also, they will be better off than folks who bought homes at the peak with variable loans.
This. The people selling in NY/NJ are (were) selling houses at inflated prices and buying in the southeast at much lower prices.
That will only last for a time, however. Prices here in central FL have gone way up over the past year and real estate has still not cooled down.
I am sad for the young families that are trying to make it in today’s economy.
How many of those parents with young families voted straight Dem ticket since 2016?
Those funds are woefully underfunded and are now just another Ponzi scheme!
Throw in the carbon divestment insanity and it gets worse.
Unemployment benefits are only given to those who had a job and they are limited in time. They are intended as a bridge between jobs, not a substitute for a job. Welfare benefits are the free handouts we should be concerned about.
They keep extending the unemployment benefits with borrowed money.
This is a recipe for economic disaster?
Only if you are the right color.
TRUE! Only slightly more than $80k, as reported by cowboy news. Of course someone fed them that “info”
And our NY, former fed reserve bank, governor is likely behind it.
Maybe to get some of that high quality scum across america to move here!
You mean “free” money.
No such thing as “free”. Someone worked for that money and stolen by the gubbermint.
I had no idea the economy in Wyoming was so robust as to support welfare of that scope. Heck that’s impressive for even Communist California and its huge economy.
Wrong. Whoever posted that, has some misinformation on Wy.
Do you live here, dummy. Its true that it was reported. If you understand CTH reasoning, what is the reason “they” put that out there?
Like I have said, we only need a small number of cool aid drinker to move here and we will join the rest of the shit show formally know as america
WY is full of some of the best working people our country has!
That is exactly why “they” would love to change us to look like the rest of the shit show
Isn’t WY booming with the natural gas fracking? And low sulfur coal?
That government largess is what kept Liz Cheney in Congress for so long.
Then there is the odd reality that when Obama was president, the labor dept wld put out numbers that looked great to great fanfare, then a little while later QUIETLY with no fanfare correct the numbers to numbers weren’t so great. The opposite happened when Trump took office. Let’s see what happens after the fanfare quietens. Wait and see.
Amen!
It’s time to go Galt. Stop working for the system and the people who want us to be serfs.
The haves have way too much and the “not haves ” don’t have enough. Here in sw fl. ,$15 an hour jobs are plentiful. Even if 2 people work 40 hrs per week ,with rents at a minimum of $2000 a month, taking home $1000 a week, plus cars, insurance ,food just isn’t enough. Many are working as much as they can to just survive. I feel bad for today’s youth. P. Pray and help others.
IDK if those of us who have would get any support here. Out in the real world we, those of us who’ve chosen that path, support each other.
That’s why I don’t let the chicanery this week in D.C. get to me. I haven’t paid them taxes in many, many years. Sure, my SS has suffered without that big FICA hit but I don’t care. Sand in the machinery.
Young people have figured that out while Boomers are workaholics.
I’m discussed with them all too!
Trying to make sense of a Keynesian economist is like trying to get a dog to explain why it is chasing its tail. A pointless exercise. Neither knows why, they simply see and chase.
To help fill in the blank, the last thing I heard DeSantis was doing was continuing to punish Disney and trying to remove their land entitlement they were given and before that it was holding colleges and universities accountable for spending on diversity, inclusion, and equity. That was this week.
I see so much evil that has achieved wealth and honor and accolades. This country and the western nations are producing so much harm for ordinary people. More and more I am hoping for a complete economic collapse of the west on the order of a Super-Great Depression that destroys businesses, banks, hedge funds, the stock market, unions, the government bureaucracy, and exposes the mountain of debt, graft, and moral corruption of this country. That God will sweep away the evil in a mighty blow.
It’s sad that it’s come to this, especially for all of us who’ve lived long, peaceful, God-fearing lives walking that high road and doing the right thing because, well, it’s the right thing to do.
Morality has departed this increasingly soul-less, God-less Republic IMO. Recovery is up to us.
A collapse is coming, but it will be very difficult for many ordinary people to survive. I am not hoping for a total collapse, it does not just wipe out the evil ones.
Good analysis. Cherry on top of it all – IRS increasing brackets by 7%! You will pay less Federal income tax because your earning have been devalued by the Biden WH!!! Now even a simple minded fool could figure out that something is way out of wack! The Biden WH is intentionally trying to break our economy!
Agreed.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/12-events-watch-2023
1) Inflation Returns
I may be the minority report here, but I do not believe we’ve seen the end of—or worst of—inflation in the United States. I argue that following a lag in which price growth appears to moderate, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation returns to the 8–12 percent range, where it persists for the rest of the year. This will be cost-push inflation, not demand-pull (emphasis mine) (see the second point below), and a lagging result of trebling the money supply in the United States since 2009. Stagflation returns, with the Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment) hitting new highs.
The cost push vs. demand pull is what SD routinely references. Translated: the bogus claims that consumers are spending too much driving inflation (i.e., Yellen herself).
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/12-events-watch-2023
Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far off. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter. – Isa 59:14
They are all liars. It’s all spin. They’ve forgotten how to speak truth. Anyone who does is punished.
With the capitulation today, not only is the Republican Party dead, the nation is as well. It will take a miracle of sovereign God to resurrect it.
Only and always, a miracle of our sovereign God.
Every store has help wanted sign. Malls empty. Huge gas lines at Costco. Water was 3.99 a case now it’s 5.49. So it’s 2008 all over. Gov pigs say to many people making to much money in Realestate so kill it. Covid is a lie to kill trump and free elections. 1a under full attack. Big brother is full on. We are fornicated.
Weren’t the 6 mo. jobs numbers adjusted downward by 1 million or so since the Administration fudged uh goofed up reporting the actual ones?
My fury is so great, I have a difficult time even reading/watching news. NOT MSM or any other government extension news; real, truthful news.
Besides Rumble and YouTube, I’m not on social media.
Yeah – but to whom are those new jobs going? Some folks have been talking about a forced targeted dirty politicized change in the labor force.
According to Kunstler, the real inflation rate is 34% so the COLAs are still inadequate.
Never trust the numbers, the adjusted numbers that come later never agree with the first numbers.
As long as Biden and his supporters, regardless of party, remain in control, there can be no real improvement anywhere in America.
Getting closer to midnight.
Twenty cents in silver coin would buy a gallon of gas in 1960. 2 silver dimes in 2023 will still buy a gallon of gas. One simple way to protect ourselves from the unrestrained spending by our elected leaders. When Americans lose confidence in their Monopoly money (fiat) its going to get spicy. I’m trying to spend more time in prayer and the Bible.
Me too.
I have stepped away from 7 years of major involvement in politics and have turned my attention to the great commission.
I no longer work on what is of lesser value, but instead will focus on the only thing of eternal value — the souls of those lost in darkness.
Your final sentence is how I have felt for many years.
These criminals are despicable. What this country needs, what this world needs, is a massive cleansing of these evil people.
Figures never lie but liars sure can figure.
Does anyone really pay attention to these skewed numbers? I believe NOTHING that comes from da gubbermint.
If every thing is so great, then why is Amazon laying off 10,000 people.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/amazon-reportedly-plans-to-lay-off-about-10000-employees-starting-this-week.html
The lying liars are lying about the economy.
$100 in 1923 is equal to $1630 today.
The inflation graph was fairly flat until Nixon took us off the gold-standard in the early 1970’s.
That graph has been steeper ever since!
The Fed has done nothing but make the bankers richer and make us poorer?
Congress and the US Treasury has helped them do it?
Most people don’t understand what monetary inflation actually is.
Think of a pie?
You can make the pie bigger, with the actual growth of goods and services.
The government chops the pie into smaller pieces, and gives the illusion of growth.
What happened…each piece of that pie is worth less.
Our fiat money supply got a double-hit with “quantitative easing” and unrestrained overspending.
Every year, the US tax revenue sets a new high record.
Every year, the Congress spends more than that increased revenue.
Every year, the government borrows from the future to pay the difference
That’s how we got $31 trillion in debt.
This is unsustainable and will eventually collapse.
It won’t be pretty!
A Recession is when your neighbor is Out of Work.
A Depression is when you are Out of Work.