It seems the BLS was able to hide 350K job losses by tweaking the length of the workweek. Let us see now, 345K + 350K = 695K job losses. But hey its Friday so lets have everyone party on taxpayer funds so that insiders can unload their overpriced shares to misinformed investors. Shhhh - Just don't tell anyone about the change in the length of the workweek!

What a sham - VHF

-

Different Take On Labor Data

John Jansen

June 5, 2009

Here is a piece written by Deutsche Bank economists on the labor report this morning. They have some interesting and instructive observations on the hours worked section of the report which I think has been glossed over elsewhere in the media (if this be media). I publish with the permission of Deutsche Bank and their thoughts begin immediately following the colon:

The -345k decline in May nonfarm payrolls was significantly better than expected, and the prior two months were revised higher by 82k. However, the details of the report were not anywhere near as upbeat as the headline suggests. In particular, the weakness in hours and earnings are reason for concern.

The length of the workweek declined by 0.1 hour to 33.1 hours, which is the aggregate hour equivalent of an additional loss of about 350k jobs. More importantly, the manufacturing workweek also declined (39.3 hrs vs. 39.5 previously)? This is a negative sign for inventory restocking in the current quarter, because inventory rebuilds have historically been accompanied by a rise in manufacturing hours worked. Average hourly earnings rose 0.1% in the month, lowering the 3- and 6-month rates of change to 1.7% and 2.2%, respectively. In short, wages are rolling over and this is likely to continue in light of another large jump in the unemployment rate to 9.4% from 8.9% previously. The unemployment rate is now at a 25-year high.