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Stock Ideas Investors Daily Edge the government employment numbers can’t be trusted.
Stock Ideas Investors Daily Edge the government employment numbers can’t be trusted. 
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| the government employment numbers can’t be trusted. |
| Friday, 04 July 2008 | ||||||||
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I don’t get this math. The four weekly initial claims reports in June saw significant increases over the May reports, yet the number of jobs lost was the same? I don’t buy it. The initial claims report for May 31 showed 359,000 new jobless claims and after a series of jumps throughout June, the report for June 28 showed 404,000 new jobless claims. The continuing benefits can’t be the savior here either. The four-week moving average for this statistic is at 3.11 million for June 21 and it was at 3.09 million on May 31. So how can the jobs lost in June be equal to the jobs lost in May? The unemployment rate crept up to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent in May. You may recall it was the jump in the unemployment rate that got all the attention last month. I am willing to bet that the number of jobs lost in June is revised upward when the July employment report comes out. As usual, the government numbers can’t be trusted. The frustrating part about all of this is trying to trade off data that you know is inaccurate, intentional or not. The data is never quite what it seems it should be. Is the government’s way of trying to protect us from the truth? Are they intentionally trying to fudge the numbers so that things don’t seem as bad as they really are? The unemployment rate is another inaccurate number. Do you really believe that only 5.5 percent of the people in this country that want to work are unemployed? Not a chance. My guess is that if you counted the people that gave up looking for a job and therefore do not count in the governments figures, the unemployment rate would be closer to 8.5-9 percent. Regardless of this misinformation, the show goes on.
Today was a shortened trading session due to the Fourth of July holiday and the markets will not re-open until Monday morning. I would look for today’s trading momentum to carry forward into Monday, unless something happens over the weekend with geo-political matters (Iran). Look for a bounce over the next week or so. This will take us out of the oversold levels that we are in currently, but then earnings season kicks off on Tuesday. You can read more about this in my regular Monday IDE article. I know this doesn’t follow the normal IDE Unplugged agenda of answering reader feedback, but I just had to speak my piece about the employment numbers. Enjoy the holiday weekend and remember the men and women that have served this country in order to protect the freedoms that we have. Good luck and good trading, Rick P.S. To let me know what you thought of today's article, send an e-mail to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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