Not All Jobs Are Created Equal (Video)

In his latest video blog post, Peter Schiff dissects the latest jobs numbers. While the media paints a rosy picture of the economy with the employment numbers, Peter takes a look at the economic data that everyone seems to ignore.

Highlights from Peter’s video:

“If you actually look beneath the surface of this strong jobs report, there are a lot of problems. First of all, more than half of the jobs that were created were low-paying jobs… secretarial, administrative assistant type jobs, waiters, bar tenders, retail. Also, jobs in leisure and hospitality, temporary services. That’s more than half the jobs.

“Also, there’s another report… the household survey… That one was flat. Basically, no gain in jobs in November. In fact, they reported about a 150,000 decrease in full-time jobs. So it was made up by an increase in part-time jobs. In fact, in that household survey, you find that big job losers went to younger people… But you had a record number of people 55 and older entering the work force… Labor force participation for older people who should be retiring – that’s going up. But the labor force participation for younger people who should be entering the work force – that’s going down…

“Most of the data that has come out even this year has been below expectations… We get a lot more bad economic news than good economic news. It’s just that these marquee numbers – the job numbers and the GDP numbers – those are the ones that get all the press. Those have been better than estimates for a while. But all the other news items that come out are obscured by some of these headlines.

“Today [Friday] is a perfect example of this… Of the four [pieces of economic data] that came out, three were bad… But all the media is talking about is the one good number, the jobs number… They grasp on to the kernel of good news, and they ignore the overwhelming amount of bad news…

“They were expecting the trade deficit to come in at $41 billion. Instead, it came in at $43.4 billion. That’s a much bigger deficit than had been forecast. In fact, they went back to the prior month and they revised that up. It was originally reported at $43 [billion] and they revised that up to $43.6 billion… Back in the 1980s, [the dollar] would have tanked on a trade deficit this bad…

“[The second data point] was factory orders. There we were looking for a drop of 0.3. Instead, the drop was 0.7. So factory orders declined by more than twice what they were forecast to decline. This is the third consecutive month that we have seen a decline in factory orders… The last time that happened was in 2012, right before the Fed launched QE3…

“Let me get to the fourth data point that came out… October consumer credit. [Note: Consumer credit numbers represent the net increase in credit during the period, not the aggregate amount.] People were looking for an expansion of consumer credit to $16.8 billion. Instead of growing… it dropped all the way down to $13.2 billion. To make matters worse, the prior month, which was originally reported at $15.9, they reduced that to $15.4…

“That’s bad news, because consumers in America can’t spend unless they have credit. They don’t have the incomes. They need to be able to borrow money, but their ability to do so is being diminished, and so their ability to spend is also being diminished…

“The national debt rising above $18 trillion for the first time [was another thing that didn’t get much media attention]… About $8 trillion of that has been added during the Obama presidency… He’s responsible for 40% of the entire national debt…

“Another piece of news that got some press… China’s economy has now surpassed the US economy, and is now the largest economy in the world. Granted, this is using purchasing power parity (PPP)… In dollar terms, the Chinese economy is smaller than the US economy… But when you adjust it for PPP, the Chinese economy for the first time ever is larger than the US economy…”

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