The Dangers of Investing Based on Phony Government Statistics
President Donald Trump recently took to Twitter to boast, “The U.S. has an increased economic value of more than 7 Trillion Dollars since the Election. May be the best economy in the history of our country. Record Jobs numbers. Nice!”
“We ran out of words to describe how good the jobs numbers are,” reported Neil Irwin of the New York Times, amplified in a Trump retweet.
If you believe the headline numbers, joblessness is at a generational low with the economy booming.
Trillions in nominal value added to the stock market since Trump’s election. GDP up over 3% in the second quarter. 223,000 jobs added in May. Unemployment at an 18-year low of 3.8%.
On the surface, this all paints a beautiful picture for the economy and stock market. But dig a little deeper, and the numbers aren’t quite as bright they appear. All that glitters is not gold.
Headline Unemployment Number Is Fake News
Donald Trump himself put his finger on one of the main flaws with the unemployment number back when he was a private citizen.
“Unemployment rate only dropped because more people are out of labor force & have stopped looking for work. Not a real recovery, phony numbers,” he posted on September 7th, 2012.
The headline unemployment number isn’t any less phony in 2018. Though it has improved under Trump’s presidency – in large part because of his pro-growth tax cuts and deregulation – the statistic is still derived from a dubious formula.
Back in 2012, Trump rightly pointed to the large numbers of workers who had dropped out of the labor force but weren’t counted among the ranks of the unemployed.
The labor force participation rate currently comes in at just 62.7%. That means 33.7% of the population is currently not employed in the labor force. The vast majority of these jobless Americans aren’t among the 3.8% officially “unemployed.”
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