Payrolls, China, and I’m Just a Bill

This week we saw Payrolls, and a number of other interesting reports:

• Nonfarm Payrolls (PAYEMS): +187k [+0.22% m/m], prior +187k also.
• Average Hourly Earnings (CES0500000003): $33.82/hr +0.24% m/m, +4.28% y/y.
• ISM Manufacturing: +47.6, prior 46.4; contractionary (< 50).
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP): +1.1% q/q, prior +1.5% q/q; adjusted for inflation = flat.
• Consumer Confidence: 106.1, prior 117.0.  Worse than expected (116), but still > 100.
• Fed Balance Sheet (WALCL): -17.8B w/w (-0.22%), deflationary.
• Total Bank Credit (TOTBKCR): +25B w/w (+0.15%); recovered this week, but -0.60% y/y.

Declining consumer confidence, contracting manufacturing, a flat GDP – these look bad. Payrolls looked okay, at least at the top level. When Payrolls were released at 08:30 Eastern, the market’s initial reaction (gold, equities) was to shoot higher, only to reverse direction about an hour later, after which most items sold off fairly hard. I’m not sure what that was about, but both gold and silver ended the day at or near the low.

With Payrolls comes “With a Disability”, which provides our monthly glimpse into how much Disability has been inflicted on the workforce. Overall, civilian labor force disability 16-64 (LNU01076955 + LNU01076960) rose by 228k, which is a new all-time high. That’s 2 million people newly disabled since the Elephant entered the Room back in 2021.

This is the group that “Joe” (really: the Biden-Handlers/Oligarchy) coerced into taking the deadly/useless Holy Shot with the “Save Grandma/No-Jab-No-Job” campaign. Supposedly, in wartime, there are 2 soldiers wounded for each death. Total population disability 16+ (LNU00074597) is up roughly 4 million since 2021, which using the 2:1 ratio, ballparks out at 2 million deaths. Now when I hear the words “Safe and effective”, I think to myself: “About 4 million wounded, and 2 million dead.” The chart shows no signs of stopping. And of course “Joe” is rolling out a new shot this winter which, he says, “works”. How many more deaths does he want? Rhetorical question, I know. He’s “just following orders.”

The effect of increasing disability is to increase demand for labor in the workforce. If 2 million employed people can’t climb stairs, can’t go shopping or go to a doctor by themselves, are blind, can’t think clearly, etc., and that keeps increasing, then – that increase adds to workforce demand.