By Brett Arends, WSJ.com and
MarketWatchBOSTON (MarketWatch) -- The news on jobs isn't as bad as it seemed on Friday.
It's worse.
President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner were trying to putting on a happy face, but the markets weren't buying. They have tumbled worldwide since the latest payroll data.
But instead of overreacting, the markets may only just be waking up to the real bad news.
1. Look out ahead.We already know that when you strip out the short-term Census jobs, May's jobs growth was a pitiful 41,000. But what people haven't realized is that the leading indicators for June are even worse. TrimTabs Investment Research Inc. tracks the real-time jobs picture by monitoring income tax deposits at the Treasury. And these have suddenly started falling. Based on the latest data, the firm predicts the economy will actually lose up to 200,000 jobs, net, in June. "The big news is that we have a job loss of about 200,000 coming in June," says Trim Tabs' Madeline Schnapp, "and the market isn't ready for it."
It's not just the stock market. You can bet that the administration -- and the country -- isn't ready either. Remember, we need to create about 100,000 just to keep up with population growth.
2. One and a half million people have 'disappeared'?The government says the unemployment rate "edged down" to 9.7% -- keeping it below the politically sensitive 10% level.
But that's only because about one and a half million people have just, miraculously "disappeared" from the official labor force.
A million and a half people disappearing? It sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory. But there it is, buried in the fine print of the government's own data.
From May 2009 to May 2010, the U.S. "civilian non-institutional population" of prime working age -- 20 to 64 -- expanded by one and a half million, 180.5 million to 182 million.
Yet over the same period the official tally of the labor force over age 20 held steady at just 148 million.
What happened to those extra people? ..............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-ways-the-jobs-numbers-are-worse-than-bad-2010-06-08