They lie about EVERYTHING!

Sec. of Labor Cho was on Bloomberg TV trying to spin the abysmal employment statistics that came out this morning. If you haven't been on top of the economic news:

The U.S. economy unexpectedly lost jobs in August for the first time in four years, sending stocks lower from Warsaw to Wall Street and increasing speculation that the Federal Reserve will be forced to reduce interest rates to counter an economic slowdown.

The drop in employment, following a month-long increase in the cost of credit prompted by losses in the mortgage market, is the clearest sign yet that the U.S. expansion is in jeopardy. Payrolls are one of the main indicators, along with sales, wages and production, which help determine the start of economic contractions.

Employers cut 4,000 workers, compared with a revised gain of 68,000 in July that was smaller than previously reported, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The unemployment rate held at 4.6 percent as almost 600,000 people left the workforce.
---Bloomberg News

The decline was shocking, as the consensus prediction was for a gain of about 100,000 jobs. One of the commentators said there was an audible gasp in the media room when the stats were released this morning. It is a strong indicator of a recession in the near future.

Cho tried to explain away the very large number of people who left the workforce (i.e. people no longer even looking for a job) by saying that this was because of students going back to school. Well, sorry Elaine, you're not going to get away with that. The data are seasonally adjusted. That means they they take the normal contraction of the work force at the end of the summer into account (and besides, the data mostly reflect an early August survey timeframe and the students wouldn't have left their summer jobs anyway). The interviewer didn't even call her on that. Meanwhile, the Sec. of the Treasury is trying to explain it all away by saying that it was a decline in government hiring. The economy is still strong. Don't look behind the curtain.