Labor

A few months ago we wrote that the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund was on the verge of collapse after a series of shady real estate investments resulted in massive markdowns of pension assets, the ouster of the fund's CIO and an FBI raid of it's largest real estate investment manager (see "Dallas Cops' Pension Fund Nears Insolvency In Wake Of Shady Real Estate Deals, FBI Raid").  We summed up the fund's dilemma as follows:  

Trump won thanks to support from working-class voters in Rust Belt states. He even managed “Reagan-like support,” to use the Washington Post’s term, from union households in particular: he lost them by just eight points, tied with the Gipper’s 1984 performance. George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney all lost union households by about 20 points; thanks to Ross Perot, Bill Clinton’s Republican opponents each fell about 30 points behind.

We suspect Lloyd Blankfein will be receiving a call from The White House (or Treasury) very soon as Goldman Sachs' economists did the unthinkable in the age of political correctness - while investigating the state of under-employment in America, the smartest people in the room found that ObamaCare has led to a rise in involuntary part-time employment, estimating that "a few hundred thousand workers" have been forced to cut hours and has "created disincentives for full-time employment."

Submitted by Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

The BLS JOLTS (Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover) report came out today.

The BLS claims jobs openings are up. Based on an alternate reports, I suggest opening are not only down, but falling steeply.

The implications are huge, so let’s dive into the discrepancies.

BLS: Job Openings vs. Hires

That’s how the BLS sees things. Before we dive into the alternate view, let’s take a peek at mainstream media analysis.

Mainstream JOLTS Comments

As former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi so eloquently explained not long ago, raising the minimum wage would wipe out thousands of entry level jobs for those who don't have very many other options.

Washington, DC is validation of Rensi's theory. According to a report from the Employment Policies Institute, nearly half of Washington, DC employers said they have either laid off employees or reduced the hours of employees to adapt to the District of Columbia's minimum wage hikes since 2014.