The Dog That Didn't Bark -- June 3, 2016; A Dumpster Fire Any Way You Look At It -- CNBC

Updates

June 4, 2016: CNBC calls it a "crummy" report and goes even farther:

Friday's May jobs report was a dumpster fire any way you look at it. And it cannot have made Hillary Clinton 's Brooklyn, New York, campaign staff very happy.

June 4, 2016: the May jobs report in 12 graphs. 

June 4, 2016: the WSJ has an op-ed on the reason for the stunning, shocking (their words, not mine) jobs report. It has to do with Dodd-Frank, state licensing, and regulatory environment -- but all of that has been in place for years and in some cases, decades. The op-ed does nothing to explain the complete collapse of the job market. Again, no mention of ObamaCare.
 

Original Post

 

This is interesting. I haven't seen anyone else report on it.

What is the most incredulous news story report today?

No one took credit for the unemployment rating dropping from 5.0% to 4.7%. Not only that, no one even discussed it. If anyone discussed the jobs report today, they were using words like "stunning" and "shocking" to describe the stunningly, shockingly low number of jobs created last month (and then blaming the lousy report on Verizon union members. LOL.).

But they weren't discussing the stunningly, shockingly drop in the unemployment rate. In times of economic uncertainty, a flat, or unchanging unemployment rate is good news. A rise of 0.1% is hardly noteworthy. A drop of 0.1% is huge. It demands a huge headline. It's the news story of the day.

Today, the unemployment rate drops a stunning, shocking 0.3% -- from 5% to 4.7% -- and not a single peep from the Obama administration. There's no indication the Labor Secretary even mentioned that at 4.7% unemployment, most economists would consider the US at "full employment." In fact, 4.7% is quite remarkable.

Strange, isn't it?

We'll get back to it later. But for now, I'm headed to bed.

Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen