... and the media doesn't know how to report it, either.
So according to the December jobs report, the economy lost another 85,000 jobs last month. In addition, the jobs report for November was revised from a loss of 11,000 jobs to a gain of 4,000 (this revision to positive growth territory, by the way, went almost totally unreported).
Let me tell you why neither one of these jobs reports matters. What happened in November and December? What happens every November and December? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.... hmmm hmmm hmmm.... dee dee dee.... OK, remember something called the holiday season? Anybody?? Well, apparently the media forgets about it.
This is why the jobs report is worthless. In November stores hire temporary help for the holiday season. At the end of December they let them go. Giving you one total jobs number for any given month is misleading at best. What I want to know is -- how many full-time, permanent jobs were created? Put the temporary seasonal jobs in another category. Put the construction jobs in another category. Don't muck up the jobs report number with jobs that are seasonal or only last for a few weeks. I guarantee you that around March there will be a lot of construction jobs starting back up, which should goose the numbers. And I guarantee you also that the media will once again only report the total.
Why can't the media give us some useful information instead of trying to panic everyone and claiming the sky is falling? Is the job market bad? Yes, we know that... maybe they think bad news sells better than accurate news? Who knows? Someday I think I'll write a post about how bad the state of journalism is these days!
