Labor

by Ron Paul

Late last week the markets were shocked by a surprisingly bad May jobs report – the worst monthly report in nearly six years. The experts expected the US economy to add 160,000 jobs in May, but it turns out only 38,000 jobs were added. And to make matters worse, 13,000 of those 38,000 were government jobs! Adding more government employees is a drain on the economy, not a measure of economic growth. Incredibly, there are more than 102 million people who are either unemployed or are no longer looking for work.

Good news for the gold investors on Friday as the Department of Labor Statistics released the long-awaited jobs report. We won’t bore you with re-hashing everything in there, but the main point you should remember is pretty obvious, the US economy was able to create just 38,000 jobs which is definitely much less than the 160,000 jobs the analysts were expecting.

Just yesterday, when looking at the latest sudden drop in the US employment, JPM warned that as a result of the dramatic downshifting in the US economy, the bank's recession indicator had just hit a new cycle high of 36%.

As the economy struggles and wage growth stagnates, everyone can rest easy knowing that the Federal Reserve bank presidents are getting paid quite nicely for all of their efforts.

While wages grew 2.6% (at best) In 2015, Fed presidents saw a 4% average salary increase. And before anyone says that the presidents took one for the team, taking a pay freeze from 2011-2013, it was made up for in 2014 when a 6.6% increase was awarded.