Labor

Submitted by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

A report from Pew Research Center reveals that between the third quarter of 2000 and the same period of last year, wages across the U.S. rose by 7.4 percent in real terms, driven largely by the oil and gas industry.

Wages in energy-dependent communities rose by the most, in some cases more than twofold, such as in Texas. This shouldn’t be surprising as the period reviewed coincides with the peak of the shale boom in the country, even though it also covers two periods of recession.

Ever since WalMart decided to increase its minimum wage and then give all employees a 2% pay raise, it has been forced to slash guidance and move forward with mass layoffs in order to cut costs (it had to offset the multi-billion dollar short-term PR investment somehow). The next phase of the cost cutting efforts will now be to replace workers with drones.

When Obama made another TV appearance earlier this week, taking credit for the Fed's reflation of the stock market as somehow indicative of an economic "recovery" ("fiction peddlers" not allowed in the crowd), he once ignore the underlying "facts" behind said recovery: here is another way of showing the unprecedented transformation in the US labor pool: since December 2014, the US has added 455,000 waiters and bartenders, while losing 10,000 manufacturing workers.

Behold: "Obama's recovery."

As the economy stalls out with dismal GDP and employment data, it is no surprise that JPMorgan is now seeing its recession indicators hitting new highs.

JPM says that the probability of a recession beginning within 12 months has moved from 30% on May 5th, to 36% today...

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

Only a captured government drone could put out a report showing only 38,000 new jobs created, with the working age population rising by 205,000, and have the balls to report the unemployment rate plunged from 5.0% to 4.7%, the lowest since August 2007. If you ever needed proof these worthless bureaucrats are nothing more than propaganda peddlers for the establishment, this report is it. The two previous months were revised significantly downward in the fine print of the press release.