Last Friday was anything but good for news on the economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a dismal jobs report that missed expectations by fifty percent. This followed a press conference two weeks ago by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen during which she indicated rate hikes might not come as soon as expected because “room for further improvement in the labor market continues.”
Yellen’s statement would be fairly unremarkable if it were not for one troublesome fact: the U.S. economy is supposedly at “full employment,” according to the measures the Fed uses to guide their interest rate policies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has it at 5.5% as of today. That is the rate most economists consider full employment for the U.S. economy and we’ve supposedly been there since February.
How could there be room for improvement in the labor market if we’re at full employment? There can’t be. But everybody knows real unemployment is much higher than the manipulated BLS statistics represent. Janet Yellen knows it. The markets know it. Tens of millions of unemployed Americans know it.
Yet everyone keeps talking about the BLS unemployment rate as if it were true.
Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.
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