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Here’s How BLS Data Proves QE Has Had Zero Effect As Jobs Growth Plods Along

Earlier we looked at non-farm payrolls, which come from the BLS the Current Employment Statistics Survey or CES, a survey of business establishments. The BLS also does a survey of households. The household survey or CPS — Current Population Survey– sometimes tells a different story from the establishment survey. It’s also important in that it breaks out full time employment from total employment so that we can analyze that important metric separately.

When the Fed began QE3 in late 2012, it added more fuel to an engine that was already running at its natural capacity. Job growth has not accelerated in response to the flood of money printing.  House prices and stock prices have inflated, thanks to too many dollars chasing too few assets. But job growth has been slow–steady, but slow, growing at slightly above the rate of population growth.

Why economists expect it to grow any faster than that is a mystery to me. Why the Fed thinks that devaluing money and subsidizing bankster gambling, with the Fed guaranteeing the profits with ZIRP, QE, and the abomination of forward guidance blowing moral hazard out to monstrous proportions, is an even bigger mystery.  The only rational explanation I can reach is that they are out of touch with reality, making them clinically insane.

The Fed is blowing massive asset bubbles in housing and stock prices while the economy plods along at a growth rate little different from when it was during a long pause in QE in 2011 and 2012. Money printing works to inflate asset prices, but it does nothing to stimulate job growth.

The actual NSA (not seasonally adjusted) number of persons reported in the CPS as employed in August fell by 604,000 from July. Over the previous 10 years, August was always a down month, averaging a decline of 451,000. The current month’s performance was below average, and the worst since the recovery began. The anomaly here is that the job losses were all part time. Full time jobs gained.

The year over year gain in total employment under the CPS  was 1.4%, up from a revised 1.3% in July (was 1.4%). The annual growth rate has decelerated from 2.3% last October.  The growth rates were actually stronger before the Fed started pumping money into the economy in November, when it settled its first MBS purchases in QE3.

Full Time Employment, Stocks, and The Fed - Click to enlarge
Full Time Employment, Stocks, and The Fed – Click to enlarge

Making matters worse, the data shows that full time jobs are growing even more slowly than the tepid growth rate of total jobs. The US is becoming a nation of part timers. Just 48% of Americans hold full time jobs today, down from 54% in 2000.

Full time employment in the CPS rose by 180,000 in August,  historically a mixed month  for full time jobs in the household survey. This year’s gain was stronger than last year’s uptick of 83,000 in August, and significantly better than the 10 year average of a decline of 120,000 for that month.

The annual gain in full time jobs was 1.4%, up from 1.3% in July. That remains below the 2.4% rate when QE3 was announced in September and 2.1% when the cash started hitting the system in November.  It’s clear that the resumption of QE last fall spurred neither total jobs, nor full time jobs.

Full Time Employment, Stocks, and The Fed - Click to enlarge
Full Time Employment, Stocks, and The Fed – Click to enlarge

However the growth rate is is better now than the 0.8% growth rate in March. The Federal budget sequestration cuts started in April with most taking effect in June. The rate of job growth rose over that period. So much for the theory that the “secastration” caused the economy to slow. It’s just more BS from the chattering class of economic polemicists and their media charlatan publicists who masquerade as journalists (are there any real journalists?). Based on the economic theory they believe, these shameless shills fit the facts to their preconceived notions. If the facts don’t fit they make up “facts” to fit their case. Professor Assburger, Paul Krugman, is a case in point, but he is far from the only one. Most economists are well practiced pathological liars.

The Fed apparently has finally awakened to the fact that the only thing QE has done is caused financial market distortions, aka bubbles. The San Francisco Fed put out a paper essentially admitting that, while couching it in terms that would be more palatable to the Fed’s boss of  bosses Bernanke, and his  capos at the FOMC. The FOMC hawk cadre has been complaining about QE from the beginning, and their complaints have continued. Fisher, Plosser, Lacker, and George are the only sane Fed District Presidents. The rest are megalomanic tinkerers who think that they can guide the economy to do what they want. Bernanke is their leader.

Full Time and Total Employed Long Term View - Click to enlarge
Full Time and Total Employed Long Term View – Click to enlarge

The chart above  gives some perspective on how far total employment and full time employment fell in the first stage of the 2008-09 depression, and how much they have yet to recover. Total employment is nearing the 2007 peak and could reach that level in a year or two assuming nothing changes. However, this is in the context of population being 6% greater today than in 2007. Full time jobs are even farther behind. Part time jobs have accounted for a disproportionate increase in total jobs.

While the number of jobs is growing, the full time employment to population ratio has hardly budged since the recovery began in 2009. The economy seems to barely be keeping pace with population growth. The full time employment to population ratio bottomed at 46% in January 2010, and it’s at 47.9% today. That compares with 47.7% a year ago. There has been virtually no improvement in the past 12 months. This ratio is still at levels last seen in 1982 and 1983 at the bottom of a horrible recession. This is just more evidence that massive money printing is resulting in asset inflation enriching the banksters and plutocrats,  while it has done nothing to increase jobs and help stem the steady disappearance of the middle class.

Full Time Employment to Population Ratio - Click to enlarge
Full Time Employment to Population Ratio – Click to enlarge
Fed ECB and BoJ- Click to enlarge
Fed ECB and BoJ- Click to enlarge

The number of unemployed persons is growing right along with the number of people who do have jobs. It is a sad state of affairs for the US, but markets don’t care about that. They respond to the amount of cash in securities dealer accounts, which, thanks to the Fed (and lately the BoJ), continues to grow. As long as the Fed continues to pump more money into the markets than deflating asset sectors can destroy, slow employment growth will not matter. In fact, the slower it is, the less the Fed is likely to cut QE by more than nominal amounts.

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See Rick Santelli use one of my proprietary charts on CNBC to explain how the Fed impacts the stock market directly through its trades with the Primary Dealers. This is just one example of the dozens of proprietary charts that I build that will help you to clearly see and understand the market’s trend, and when that trend is beginning to change.

Watch my interview by Lindsay Williams from the documentary- The US Economy- Does Money Grow on Trees? 

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