The Worst Day Of The Month

I have come to dread the first Friday of every month. That's the day the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report comes out. It's easily the worst day of the month. The propaganda build-up before the report is almost unendurable, and has been getting worse lately—if that's possible—because the BLS has managed to create hundreds of thousands of imaginary jobs through their astonishing seasonal and other adjustments.

But it's not so much the incessant propaganda about how the United States is making a big-time come-back. No, that I could handle if that's all there were to it. No, it's because in 2012 the economic propaganda is inextricably intertwined with the presidential election, which is another whole boatload of nonsense. If you put these two bullshit stories together, the propaganda becomes almost unbearable. I could ignore all this nonsense, but my "job" is to write this blog. So I can't ignore it, I don't have that luxury.

And this is important—I can't ignore the propaganda because that's the real story.

Here's Erza Klein of the Washington Post on expectations about the jobs report. Ezra is intelligent. Look, I don't doubt that. The problem with Ezra and a boatload of other talking heads is they have the consciousness of the average cucumber. Check this out.

“Employers probably added more than 200,000 workers to payrolls in March for a fourth straight month as U.S. companies gained confidence sales will keep improving, economists said before a government report today..."

Of course, those are just estimates. And estimates can be wrong. We'll find out at 8:30am ET, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the official numbers for March.

And then, over the next few months, we'll find out whether what we found out today was true, when the BLS releases its revisions to the March jobs numbers.

(Remember: revisions to jobs numbers can be quite significant, as when BLS initially reported that we had added zero jobs in August 2011 and then revised that to 100,000.)

At this point, I think it's cliche (but correct!) to say that the first Friday of every month -- that is to say, the day the jobs numbers are released -- is the most important day of the month for the 2012 election. But looking forward on the calendar, the election will be held on Tuesday, November 6th. That is, you'll note, only a few days after Friday, November 2nd — the day the October jobs numbers come out.

If those numbers are unexpectedly high or low — even if they’re wrong and will later be revised — they could have an unusually large impact on voters trying to decide whether Obama's recovery is a solid thing or it’s better to turn to new leadership. In fact, it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration to say that in a tight election, in an uncertain economy, the BLS’s first read on the October labor market could decide who wins the presidency in 2012. Just something to think about.

Wow! Ezra's really one smart pickle. But I don't really want to get into Ezra's inadequacies today. Everything he believes is ultimately self-serving, he's a thirty-something twenty-something with an important, prominent position at the Imperial Capital's official propaganda organ, and of course there's all the ego horseshit that goes along with that. And he himself is an organ—guess which one.

(Hint: it's below the waist.)

My pain today was eased somewhat because the official jobs report will almost certainly persuade some talking heads to shut up about how well the economy is doing. They'll just spin it as positive for Willard Romney. That's what will happen.

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 120,000 in March, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing, food services and drinking places, and health care, but was down in retail trade.

Despite the anemic number of new jobs, the BLS still managed to lower the unemployment rate by a tenth of a percent, which was no doubt due in large part because the number of Amercans counted in the Labor Force shrank by 164,000. (Table A-1, seasonally adjusted). If the phenomenal BLS jobs growth numbers were true, Americans would be re-entering the Labor Force in the hopes of finding a job.

Look. It's not as if I don't want people to get jobs, OK? I do want people to get jobs.

I want them to get good-paying full-time jobs so they can make ends meet. I wish we lived in a world where that was possible.

But it's far more important that Americans understand the correct story about where they stand. I try to tell that story every day on DOTE. It's not as though I would rather be right than see people get good-paying jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that the story I am telling about how fucked we are in America is true. It's a true story. I don't make this shit up. I document this story all the time. There is no dearth of evidence to back it up.

But in 2012 nobody wants to believe the real story. General denial is the real story of 2012. The Ezra Kleins of this world want you to believe in fairy tales about jobs and the election. They like to spin imaginative narratives, and they expect you to swallow them hook, line and sinker.

What a crock of shit.

Sorry about the rant. I'm having a rough morning. Have a nice weekend.

Bonus Video — Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

 

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[Bill Hicks]

Years ago, the Chicago Tribune employed a pompous twit of a columnist named Bob Greene (who later resigned in the wake of a sex scandal). As a joke, the weekly alternative newspaper, Chicago Reader, began running its own regular column called, "We Read Bob Greene So You Don't Have To," in which they would savagely lampoon Green's idiotic scribblings.

Thanks very much for reading Ezra Klein so the rest of us don't have to. :)