Pop The Hood And Examine The Engine, Are Kidding Me?

Ignore the jobless rate; it's more a product of Disney's Imagineering unit than statistical reality. The real unemployment rate is much higher than reported.  While job creation histogram (JCH) paints a picture of job growth since 2011 (see chart 1), it has done so while the civilian labor force has struggled to keep pace with the population.  Now its tepid advance is showing signs of decay (see chart 2) in 2012.

Does any of this matter in an election year?  Far too investors use orchestrated perceptions (the looks of the car) rather than reality-based discipline (quality of the engine that drive it) to make their investment decisions.  In this case, there's no way the salesperson will pop the hood and discuss quality to facilitate the transaction.

Chart 1:  Job Creation Histogram (JCH):  Net Nonfarm Payrolls Added/(Lost) less Civilian Labor Force Added/(Lost), 12 Month Average.

Chart 2:  Civilian Labor Force (CLF) And Year-Over-Year (YOY) Change

 Headline: U.S. April hiring slows, jobless rate falls to 8.1 percent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employers cut back on hiring in April and the jobless rate fell as people gave up the hunt for work, a somber note on the economy that could hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances. Employers added just 115,000 workers to their payrolls last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. It was the third straight month in which hiring slowed, keeping fears alive that the U.S. economy is losing momentum. It also dampens hopes that a stretch of strong winter hiring signaled a turning point for the recovery. "It shows sluggish growth," said John Doyle, currency strategist at Tempus Consulting in Washington. The unemployment rate ticked a tenth of a point lower to 8.1 percent, a three-year low, as people left the workforce. The jobless rate is derived from a separate survey of households, which showed a drop in the number of jobs in April. Still, the report was not all negative. The government revised upward its initial estimates for payroll growth in February and March by a combined 53,000. That left the six-month average of job growth at 197,000, nearly exactly where it would have been had April job growth come in as expected at 170,000.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

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