Beyond the Payroll Numbers: America’s Real Economy (Audio)

Once again, Peter Schiff uses his latest podcast to dig into the real economic data of the United States. Here is a round up of the key figures that mainstream news ignores, while focusing almost solely on payroll numbers.

Weekly unemployment claims are at the highest level in 10 months.

February was the 2nd consecutive month of greater than 50,000 layoffs, according to Challenger data.

America is already 19% ahead of last year’s layoff pace.

4th quarter productivity dropped by a greater than expected 2.2%.

Factory orders fell for the 6th consecutive month. The last two times this happened, the US economy was already in recession – 2008 and 2001.

Labor force participation rate went down from 62.9 to 62.8 — he lowest it’s been since the 1970s is 62.7.

Average hourly earnings were only up 0.1% – half of expectations.

The number of people not in the labor force hit an all-time record high.

The labor force is shrinking: For every 1 person that entered the labor force, 3 people left.

In Peter’s view, either the US economy is already in a recession, or we’re on our way there.

Highlights from Peter’s podcast:

“People were thinking that the Fed is going to wait [to raise interest rates]. But now that they’ve got this jobs data, everybody is convinced that they’re going to move in June. I don’t know why. There’s nothing about this data that should change the Fed’s mind. It’s the same type of jobs numbers that we’ve been getting all year long. If the Fed wasn’t about to raise rates based on the January number (which it clearly wasn’t based on Janet Yellen’s recent testimony), why should it raise it now? There’s nothing remarkable about this number…

“Think about this. The total number of jobs created was 295,000. If only 96,000 people entered the labor force, what is that telling you? How did you create 295,000 jobs for 96,000 people? What it means is that a lot of the people who got jobs were already in the labor force and already had jobs. In other words, a lot of the jobs are second jobs. People had one part-time job and they got another part-time job. That’s what’s going on. The numbers don’t differentiate how many hours you work in your job…

“If the Fed really is going to raise interest rates in June, then what’s going to happen to the stock market? It’s going to keep going down. It’s going to go way down. What’s going to happen to the real estate market? It’s going to go way down. What’s going to happen to all the speculators who own properties? They’re going to try to sell them…”

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