Don't Drink the 'Fantasy Jobs' Punch

NEW YORK (Bullion Bulls Canada) -- It's been quite a while since I've discussed the statistical farce invented in the U.S., known as the birth/death model. Several years ago, one of the employees of the U.S. government went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and said exactly what they wanted to hear: The U.S. economy was producing new jobs that couldn't be "seen" by any of their job-counters.

Moreover, claimed the statistician, there was a simple "model" (i.e., theory), that could be constructed to count all of these invisible jobs. This model had absolutely nothing to do with employment. Instead, all these invisible jobs could be captured through a magical formula -- based simply upon the number of people being born and/or dying in the U.S. at any given time.

Voila! A formula that magically invents jobs, but is based on data with no logical/statistical connection to employment. With this, one can lie with impunity, and that is precisely what the BLS has done. The pattern of deceit is identical each year.

The fabrications begin in a big way in January. However, the birth/death model is not adding phony jobs to the BLS monthly non-farm payrolls report each January. Instead, in a Machiavellian twist, the birth/death subtracts 300,000 to 400,000 jobs from the monthly jobs report every January.

Immediately readers will think I am contradicting my own analysis. Not so fast. First look at another tool that the BLS uses/abuses frequently to alter reality: Seasonal adjustments.

Because of all the Christmas hiring, the January "seasonal adjustment" is always a positive number -- as a response to the expected, scheduled, post-holiday layoffs. Indeed, it is the largest positive number of the entire year.

The problem for the BLS: Even the sheep wouldn't believe the U.S. government, if it claimed (every January) that the economy was producing huge (seasonally adjusted) "jobs gains" -- as people watched all of the Christmas workers being laid off. Enter the birth/death model.

This provided the BLS with the opportunity to make use of a great, big "seasonal adjustment" for the month of January. However, instead of producing some gigantic (and farcical) "jobs gain" for the month of January -- which no one would believe -- the BLS rubbed out all of the fabricated seasonally adjusted jobs with a 300,000 to 400,000 subtraction from the birth/death model.

Essentially, these are fantasy jobs that the BLS has "put in the bank," to be used to pad succeeding jobs reports. Of course, it uses up that paltry 300,000 to 400,000 fantasy jobs early each year.