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Which isn't a total shock since economists have been saying there is no way companies could hold out forever with record low joblessness

It is a surprise, if not a shock, because record low unemployment is a myth.

Computers have been automating service jobs for decades. When was the last time you asked a teller to withdraw $100 from your account? Or a telephone operator to place a call to your mom? Do you pay a laundress to scrub your shirts on a washboard?

Yes, that is my point. Unemployment is actually at a high right now, already, not the government-reported low.

There are also some other "unofficial" rates, like this one that pegs the "true unemployment around 21.2%. They add in "long-term discouraged workers" that were removed by BLI in 1994. My guess is this 21.2% is in large part the Trump die-hard base members; people who have been unemployed for so long the Feds don't even count them as real people anymore. That's 53M over-18 people.

Baseless paranoia is an uncharitable mischaracterization. Paranoia? Sure, I will grant you as much. However, it is based on a long term employment trends. See Unemployment data.

I have clients who struggle filling positions. When I inquire, I find it's never that there aren't applicants, just not applicants of sufficient quality. And in those cases, when I ask how much more they're offering for the position above market rates, they all look at me with bewilderment.

Also that unemployment rate? Manufactured horesehit. http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

That site has been debunked again and again as "manufactured horseshit" itself. Got to love that the data backing their claims continues to be pay only. Not shady at all. If you honestly believe that over 1 in 5 working age Americans actively seeking work are unemployed you're a fool. Now if you said 1 in 5 think they aren't being paid enough or aren't being paid a "living wage" or can't find a job they want that might be reasonable but then you have to define what a "living wage" is and no one really agrees on that. What's a normal standard of living? Above the poverty line?

I have clients who struggle filling positions. When I inquire, I find it's never that there aren't applicants, just not applicants of sufficient quality. And in those cases, when I ask how much more they're offering for the position above market rates, they all look at me with bewilderment.

Also that unemployment rate? Manufactured horesehit. http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

Unemployment is anything but low The government has changed the definition over the years, and now publishes a number that excludes a lot of people who would really, really like a job. But once their unemployment benefits have run out, well, they magically aren't "unemployed" anymore, at least, not according to the government.

While I don't live in the US, I have friends and family there, and I don't have the impression that there are 6 million decent jobs waiting to be filled. There are a lot of crap jobs out there: lousy hours, or lousy pay, or no benefits. Yes, if you're hungry, you'll take a seasonal job. But if you're out of work in Wisconsin (say), you can't afford to move to Florida to pick oranges for a couple of weeks.

With 20% (real figure) of the potential workforce out of work, companies can also offer crap salaries for the few real jobs that exist. Outside of certain islands, inflation-adjusted take-home pay has been dropping for years. Overall, the US economy sucks. In fact, the US economy has been shrinking for more than a decade, and the huge levels of governmental debt are not helping. And that's a vicious cycle: meager tax income -> more debt -> depressed economy -> unemployment -> even more meager tax income. Rinse, repeat and amplify.

If we restrict ourselves to the tech field (which is a small part of the overall employment picture), TFA does have a point: Companies let the HR department fill vacancies. The typical big-company HR department has zero clue about tech, and will happily filter CVs based on an impossible list of buzzwords. Which means that the BS-artists (who likely have few real skills) have the best chance at landing a job. So the company gets burned, and the HR department filters harder on even more buzzwords. But again, that's only true for a small part of the market. The bigger problem is the spiraling combination of government debt and unemployment.

Unemployment is anything but low The government has changed the definition over the years, and now publishes a number that excludes a lot of people who would really, really like a job. But once their unemployment benefits have run out, well, they magically aren't "unemployed" anymore, at least, not according to the government.

While I don't live in the US, I have friends and family there, and I don't have the impression that there are 6 million decent jobs waiting to be filled. There are a lot of crap jobs out there: lousy hours, or lousy pay, or no benefits. Yes, if you're hungry, you'll take a seasonal job. But if you're out of work in Wisconsin (say), you can't afford to move to Florida to pick oranges for a couple of weeks.

With 20% (real figure) of the potential workforce out of work, companies can also offer crap salaries for the few real jobs that exist. Outside of certain islands, inflation-adjusted take-home pay has been dropping for years. Overall, the US economy sucks. In fact, the US economy has been shrinking for more than a decade, and the huge levels of governmental debt are not helping. And that's a vicious cycle: meager tax income -> more debt -> depressed economy -> unemployment -> even more meager tax income. Rinse, repeat and amplify.

If we restrict ourselves to the tech field (which is a small part of the overall employment picture), TFA does have a point: Companies let the HR department fill vacancies. The typical big-company HR department has zero clue about tech, and will happily filter CVs based on an impossible list of buzzwords. Which means that the BS-artists (who likely have few real skills) have the best chance at landing a job. So the company gets burned, and the HR department filters harder on even more buzzwords. But again, that's only true for a small part of the market. The bigger problem is the spiraling combination of government debt and unemployment.

This is a better link to the background rather than the charts.

http://www.shadowstats.com/art...

Which reminds me that I also forgot about the equally squishy Birth/Death models.

Take with a grain of salt and dydd, but according to John Williams @shadowstats, "long-term discouraged workers [...] were defined out of official existence in 1994" so the definition of discouraged workers is a shifting target from a historical perspective. Maybe he's a crackpot with an axe to grind, but he substantiates his arguments quite extensively.

Another lever that BLS uses in their statistics is the "seasonal adjustment," a rather squishy concept once you investigate.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

U definitions; U6 is most of the people who want to work but cannot find a job, cannot find a full time job (underemployment) and thus still need assistance, or who have given up.

ShadowStats also factors in those who have permanently left the work force but are still in the 19-64 age range. It's no secret that permanent disability and permanent Medicaid status have both exploded since 2008. ShadowStats factors those people into their own unemployment rate, as it appears the Federal Government moved a permanent segment of society from the unemployment rolls (U3 and U6) to "out of workforce" in an effort to lower the unemployment rate. Perhaps that's why the Labor Force Participation Rate is the lowest it's been in 40 years (note: labor force participation rate only includes those who are of working age, who are physically able to work, but are not actively working - it does not include retirees).

You mean like during the last decade where ***REPORTED*** inflation has been practically negative?

FTFY

See http://www.shadowstats.com/alt... for more realistic numbers. My 1974 Ford Maverick, 302 V8 and automatic transmission, was approximately $4070 CDN, sales-tax included. The 2017 Ford Focus is approx $14,400 CDN, before taxes. Public transit has also risen. http://globalnews.ca/news/2359... "From 3 cents to $3.25: a brief history of TTC fare hikes". And of course, house prices are going nuts.

But Canadian inflation is reported as being approx 2% http://www.inflation.eu/inflat...

Electronic toys have been worked into the stats to get low numbers. 10 years ago, I got a 50-inch "HDTV" (1366x768). Now, a 55-inch 4K UHD LED TV can be had for $450. This is "deflationary". The same governments that monkey the numbers to report low inflation rates are also monkeying the numbers to report tons of "global warming". I don't trust any numbers from governments.

'As new discouraged workers move regularly from U.3 into U.6 unemployment accounting, those who have been “discouraged” for one year also are dropped from the U.6 measure'.
http://www.shadowstats.com/art...

So there are many people out there who are not counted, even in U.6.

Is this real numbers? Can these numbers be trusted?
Is the administration inflating the numbers?

No, no, and yes. (Except that the administration is deflating the unemployment numbers, not inflating them).

http://www.shadowstats.com/ shows, in the graph on the home page, that true unemployment in the USA is currently about 22%. Explanation and details can be found in http://www.shadowstats.com/art...

Is this real numbers? Can these numbers be trusted?
Is the administration inflating the numbers?

No, no, and yes. (Except that the administration is deflating the unemployment numbers, not inflating them).

http://www.shadowstats.com/ shows, in the graph on the home page, that true unemployment in the USA is currently about 22%. Explanation and details can be found in http://www.shadowstats.com/art...

If we calculated unemployment now like we did the 1930s, you'd see we're still at 23% unemployment. Doubling the current unemployment rate may not be as bad as many think...

No we don't. Inflation is only "low" because the Government has decided that when it used to price out a pound of beef, it can now use 12 ounces, and that when it used to determine energy to keep your house at 70 degrees it now decides that 67 degrees is good enough. Inflation statistics are highly skewed, and real inflation is running a lot worse (try to find a half gallon of ice cream any more - that old standard in the pre-1990s is now impossible to find, they are all 1.5 to 1.75 quarts, yet the Government only calculates inflation based on the increase per package, not the change in the size of the package).

Inflation is not really the problem, if you get paid good money convert it to gold, property or other item of real value.

Inflation is a problem (it's been chronically understated compared to how it was calculated in 1980 and 1990), and it is awfully hard to eat gold or dirt...

The web site ShadowStats.com features data by one statistician which recalculates various economic trends -- unemployment, inflation, etc. -- using current government data but using older, pre-cooked algorithms that have been tossed aside. As the post above notes, cooking the stats for short-term political gain is an old sport -- but it is also a bi-partisan sport practiced by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

Your views may differ, but those recalculated stats reflect the unemployment of my friends and neighbors, and the prices of things I buy at stores, much, much more accurately than does the official government statistics that are trotted out on the nightly news.

The web site ShadowStats.com features data by one statistician which recalculates various economic trends -- unemployment, inflation, etc. -- using current government data but using older, pre-cooked algorithms that have been tossed aside. As the post above notes, cooking the stats for short-term political gain is an old sport -- but it is also a bi-partisan sport practiced by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

Your views may differ, but those recalculated stats reflect the unemployment of my friends and neighbors, and the prices of things I buy at stores, much, much more accurately than does the official government statistics that are trotted out on the nightly news.

The web site ShadowStats.com features data by one statistician which recalculates various economic trends -- unemployment, inflation, etc. -- using current government data but using older, pre-cooked algorithms that have been tossed aside. As the post above notes, cooking the stats for short-term political gain is an old sport -- but it is also a bi-partisan sport practiced by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

Your views may differ, but those recalculated stats reflect the unemployment of my friends and neighbors, and the prices of things I buy at stores, much, much more accurately than does the official government statistics that are trotted out on the nightly news.

Well, fiction isn't necessarily the right word. Some parts of it are technically true, but misleading. Consider the unemployment numbers. You always imagine that number to be the portion of the country that needs a job. But it isn't, the headline number is the portion of the country receiving unemployment payments - which are time limited, and which go away if a person gets a part time job, etc, etc. In other words, it is a useful figure for short term fluctuations, but a lousy measurement for a multi-year malaise.

The labor statistics (headline name "job growth" or "new jobs") are a joke. They are allegedly based on estimates and get corrected as harder numbers come in. The initial estimates get all of the attention, and the corrections come silently and in the dark of night weeks and months later. Not surprisingly, for several years the corrections have nearly all been in the negative direction - meaning that the attention grabbing headline numbers have all been hopelessly inflated.

And anything involving the money supply or inflation gets redefined now and then to obscure comparisons to the past. And things like the CPI are hopeless, and would be even if managed by a perfectly honest angel. ShadowStats.com maintains, when possible, new data calculated using the historic formulas, giving as much continuity as possible. But I think it is a pay site now.

And then there is the climate "data"...

It is somewhere between 6% and 9% depending upon the criteria you use. Much like being employed used to mean at least 20 hours of work per week, but now means just 1 hour of work per week. Change the criteria, you can improve the reported numbers.

In case anyone is interested in the real unemployment numbers, look at John Williams' Shadowstats shadowstats.com

Specifically http://www.shadowstats.com/art...

"Counting All Discouraged/Displaced Workers, May 2016 Unemployment Rose to About 23.0%".

Why the big discrepancy? Because, just like the inflation figures and other government statistics, the unemployment numbers have been redefined and massaged to get them into an "acceptable" range. Williams explains the trick:

"To be counted among the U.S. government’s headline unemployed (U.3), an individual has to have looked actively for work within the four weeks prior to the unemployment survey conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS)".

So, essentially, what the BLS called the "unemployed" are people who are between jobs. If it takes a person more than a month to find a new job - or if they cannot prove that they have been actively looking - that person ceases to exist as far as the BLS unemployment statistics are concerned.

Take a look at the summaries at http://www.shadowstats.com/
The U6 is at 10% and the shadow stats around 23%. Want more details, subscribe.

Two comments:

1. ShadowStats has its alternative M3 money supply growth running at about 3-4% right now. That's not "way higher" that BLS's measurement of CPI-based inflation. Source: http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

2. Sounds like you're from the Austrian school. Question: If the "way higher" increased money supply doesn't seem to have an impact on the prices of goods and services, then what is your concern? That inflation has unnaturally been bottled up by the Fed and is predicted, for the nth year in a row, to come roaring back resulting in massive price-level inflation? That prices of financial assets are too high? That the Fed won't be able to properly manage its balance sheet over the next decade resulting in spiking yields? If "inflation is growth of the money supply and not about price levels" is more than mere semantics, what does it actually mean?

• * Has the price of the stuff that YOU buy gone up or down?
• * Why did you buy that stuff?
• * What do you actually need to buy to survive?
• * What do you need to buy to be content?

In specific, only you can answer these questions. However, there are some common general trends:

• * The measure of inflation published by the US government: http://www.usinflationcalculat... will be different from the measure of inflation that you experience. The pressures to influence the rate of inflation published by the US government are different from the pressures that influence YOUR purchasing. A couple years ago, Forbes had an interesting opinion piece that pointed out some of the pressures on the US government to manipulate the published rate of inflation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...
• * It is very hard to interpret the published US rate of inflation, because they change their methodology ALL THE TIME: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpi_met...
• * In general, these changes in methodology tend to minimize the published rate of inflation. Older methods, yield a much higher rate of inflation: http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
• * If any of the things that YOU buy experience higher rates of inflation, then it's costs will dominate your budget. This is particularly compelling when the item is a non-optional part of your expenses, such as food, housing, clothing, medical, maintenance of income, community interaction, or interaction with family.

To add an insignificant personal data point, every time I have measured the increase in the expense of food, housing, medical or maintenance of income in the last 30 years, my results have traced the US methodology used back in the early '80s instead of current methodology. For the last 35 years, I have held jobs at the same university in the leading edge of IT. Back then, my monthly salary was about $35K. If my salary increases had matched the cost of living according to the methodology used in 1982, my current monthly salary would exceed $250K. The current actual costs of food, housing, medical and maintenance of income would be about the same percentage of my budget NOW as they were then. Instead, my salary has trailed the actual published inflation rate, and my current mandatory costs are crippling me.

You've been bamboozled by the previous Clinton President. If you have been paying attention to what it costs you to rent or own your home, buy your groceries, and the other various market baskets of real life goods and services, you know that the cost of living has increased dramatically in 3 decades.

This guy figured it out that the government stats have no basis in reality. He found this out when a major aerospace company engaged him to figure out why its econometric model wasn't working. The truth is, the changes in what official government inflation stats measure were designed to reduce the official inflation number which reduces the required cost of living outlays for entitlements and benefits. Read this link to get the real story...

http://www.shadowstats.com/

Seems like a pretty solid methodology to me. Even Time Magazine, no conservative outlet, notes that the official CPI is quite a bit lower than other oft-used measures of inflation, and that the CPI calculation has been tweaked consistently for the last several decades.

Only if you fudge the inflation numbers (which this Administration has been doing). Run the numbers with the same CPI calculations as used back in the 70s and 80s and you'll find inflation is running about 7-8%, and that puts the economy still in a recession.

Sorry, but Shadowstats is pure bunk. They're not using the old CPI calculations, they're taking the modern ones and just adding a few percent because they feel like it.

no, its those who keep thinking we are stopping him because of his color and not his horrible horrible policy is flat out racebaiting scumbaggary

Horrible policy? He's the first president since WWII that hasn't taken the nation into a recession. Instead, he took the nation out of one and there has been steady, if slow, growth every quarter since.

Only if you fudge the inflation numbers (which this Administration has been doing). Run the numbers with the same CPI calculations as used back in the 70s and 80s and you'll find inflation is running about 7-8%, and that puts the economy still in a recession.

But hey, it's OK we're still running a real deficit of $1.4 trillion, annually, so it's all good!

Presented without comment for your consideration:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

http://www.chapwoodindex.com/

If you used the same inflation calculation as used during the "bad old days" of Carter and the early 80s, inflation would be about 8%. But by changing how it's calculated the Federal Government can game the number and make it sound great that it's only 1-2%...

If you count discouraged workers, then the unemployment numbers are still REALLY bad -

http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

50% rise in eight years? That's only 1.5^0.125 = 5.2%/year. That's less than the rise in college tuition. For the extremes of the range, there is the ridiculously low CPI of 10% over eight years and the ridiculously high ShadowStats.com of 100% over eight years (view page source to see the hidden value). The geometric mean of those two extremes is sqrt(1.1*2.0)=48%.

Maybe 50% over eight years (5.2%/year) is in fact overstating actual inflation, but it's far from self-evident. By just stating the number and expecting people to be shocked, Mark O'Neill is, intentionally or not, advancing the wage-suppression-through-inflation scam.

When the Government gets to redefine what is considered in rating unemployment, inflation, or GDP growth - it can always look good. Looking at measures from 1980 or 1990 and things are decidedly less rosy. We're "doing better" because we've moved the goalposts and dropped pesky things like food and housing (saying that 12 ounces of bacon is all you "need" and since it's the same price as 16 ounces was just 4 years ago - zero inflation for bacon, even though the quantity is cut by 25%).

After all, we have a higher percentage of people on Government assistance today than in 2009. But don't worry, the Government has increased your chocolate ration from 30 grams to 25 grams!

Funny, then, that they keep creating it at every opportunity. Almost all government economists are Keynesians. The government has followed policies suggested by Keynesians, including Krugman's infamous suggestion that we "fix" the bursting internet bubble by creating a housing bubble. In fact, looking back through history, I can't think of a single instance of stagflation that didn't occur under any but a Keynesian administration.

Of course, we don't have stagflation now, because the idiots in charge keep changing the rules about how things are calculated. But hey, who's counting? No-one "important"!

http://www.shadowstats.com/
http://www.financialsense.com/...

No, it means the unemployment rate, as it was calculated during the Great Depression, is higher than it was for all but one year of Great Depression. http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

I have a bridge with an ocean view to sell you. http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...

The bls.gov website's figures don't match reality.

FTFY.

For a closer approximation to reality, refer to http://www.shadowstats.com/

If one under-reports the real inflation rate, the net difference appears to be economic growth.

Try looking at some numbers that haven't been mangled by the feds.. FYI Ground beef is now 3.00$/lb, Rib-eye is 8.00$/lb, and still going up just like everything else. Here is a link explaining how our government mangled inflation stats.

If you need more proof, just look at the near zero interest rates for savings or short term CD's. That should be a red flag that all is not well.

If one under-reports the real inflation rate, the net difference appears to be economic growth.

Try looking at some numbers that haven't been mangled by the feds.. FYI Ground beef is now 3.00$/lb, Rib-eye is 8.00$/lb, and still going up just like everything else. Here is a link explaining how our government mangled inflation stats.

If you need more proof, just look at the near zero interest rates for savings or short term CD's. That should be a red flag that all is not well.

If one under-reports the real inflation rate, the net difference appears to be economic growth.

Try looking at some numbers that haven't been mangled by the feds.. FYI Ground beef is now 3.00$/lb, Rib-eye is 8.00$/lb, and still going up just like everything else. Here is a link explaining how our government mangled inflation stats.

If you need more proof, just look at the near zero interest rates for savings or short term CD's. That should be a red flag that all is not well.

Exactly. Check out, for example, this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or...

Or this: http://www.paulcraigroberts.or...

If Roberts' in-your-face tone doesn't suit you, try the soberly factual John Williams at http://www.shadowstats.com/

According to shadowstats.com, actual (i.e. not reported) inflation over the past 25 years has averaged 8.4% annually. Now, take your current compensation and multiply it by 2.24. Do you expect to be earning that much in 10 years? OK, now take your current compensation and multiple it by 7.51. Do you expect to be earning that much in 25 years? Keep in mind there will be long droughts during recessions where your compensation will stagnate or even decline.

Absolutely 100% they could. You can afford a 1960s-quality car and a tiny house as was normal then with 1960s-quality plumbing and electricity, 1960s-quality appliances

Now you're just trolling.

All you have to do is look at the change in percentage of income that a family pays for housing to see what's changed.

And you still haven't addressed the biggest elements, education and health care. You know where I can get a 1960's quality University of Chicago education and not end up in debt?

You must know that median income has been dropping,

http://www.shadowstats.com/img...

The bifurcation you see in 1996 is when the CPI stopped tracking education, energy and health care.

Funny you say this, because there appears to be a lot of bias towards understating inflation, the primary driver being those "unfunded liabilities".
Shadow Government Statistics website
Indexing taxation to inflation would tend to counterbalancing that.

It is funny that when people observe that almost everything raise faster that inflation, they blame all these providers/producers separately, instead of question reported inflation in first place.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
If you look at shadowstats, last year inflation was around 5-%... as observed on cable service prices.

So real question should be not why cable service prices are rising so sharply, but rather, why CPI cheats? Answers are probably going to be more interesting that "rising cost of equipment"

Anytime you talk about inflation, you have to be cognoscente of the fact that every government on the planet lies about it.
Their deficit spending, fiat currency, crony capitalism for the elite depends on it.

Look at Venezuela for example

Or the US of A.

I'd be willing to bet that if you price cable services in terms of real assets like oil, gold, silver, food, energy or even a subway ticket in NYC it would be a different picture, averaged out over the long term.

If you're taking the government's figures on inflation I've got prime ocean front real estate to sell you in beautiful New Mexico.

How do you tell if the government is lying?

Their lips are moving (or they've typed something out).

Inflation since QE has not been outside historical levels. QE started around late 2008.

A lot of that "consistency" is due to tweaks in the CPI in 1980 and 1990... Adjusting for those calculation tweaks we see that inflation is actually quite high, nearing 9% on the historical record, not the claimed 2%.