Bogus Numbers & John's Layoff Experience

Do you have a job loss survival plan roughed out? Please keep in mind that the govt is quietly "revising" its job numbers and backing off on how supposedly "robust" the job market was and allegedly still is. So what's it gonna take?

The narrative is "oopsy daisy, who could have known? 🤪"  Uh, well, anyone with common sense knows! I told you and warned you repeatedly that these numbers could not possibly have been true. 


Links:

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/06/20/a-tragic-science/

https://thejobmarketjournal.com/f/ha-ha-the-numbers-were-lies

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/08/23/jobs-report-employment-down-306k/70658639007/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/job-growth-cools-in-august-5435681/


Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/ 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to read a bit of your mail that I received and talk about the bogus and manipulated numbers that we get from our bogus and manipulated media. What a surprise, right? I have permission to read this message on the air. But I do want to protect the person's privacy. So I will just call him John Doe, not his real name. Obviously, John writes and says, my wife and I listened to your podcast every week, we've never really thought much about the job market. But we were inspired to create job loss survival plans based on your podcast, we also started paying more attention to the local area. And we noticed mom and pop shops laying off or closing up shop altogether. I had been at my company for seven years and had never had a bad performance review or a conflict with anyone on the job. Back in July, I was laid off, and it was a surprise, I had a panic attack. But at the same time, I knew I had a plan. After I called my wife to tell her I started calling the top five people I had on my list to see if anyone could help. I started a new job on Monday, September 18. And it's a big relief. That job came from a lead I got from one of my top five people and it helped. I was given two weeks of severance pay. And that was it. People think unemployment is going to really help them but it doesn't. I applied for a lot of jobs and received no calls and no interviews. Had it not been for this job I found out about through a friend, I would still be looking and feeling extremely stressed out. This whole experience has really inspired the wife and I to get much more serious about emergency preparedness in general. We were in la la land before but we are wide awake now. Thank you for what you do and quote. Well, John, thank you. Thank you for writing in for your kind words. And thank you for sharing your experience with us. Because you're not alone, what you're experiencing or what you have experienced is not an isolated incident. I think some people have it in their mind that it's preferable to stick around and get laid off because they think there's a golden parachute coming. They think that they're going to get some wildly fantastic severance package where they get like six months or a year of salary. And Cobra paid for. And it's like, no, in most cases, that ain't it. That is not what happens in corporate America most of the time. In fact, I would say that John's probably lucky he received two weeks of severance pay as pitiful is that is there a lot of companies that will hand out a pink slip. And that's it. Your final paycheck is the only thing that you're getting from them. Some companies you even have to haggle or threaten legal action about if you still have unused PTO that you've accrued, what's going to happen to that it can be a nightmare, to go through a layoff. So this weird idea that some people have that a layoff is fun and games, it's no big deal. It's a cash cow, I'll get all this money. Good luck with that. The other thing that John addresses is the idea that unemployment is going to really be a big help. As he says people think unemployment is going to really help them but it doesn't know it doesn't. Unemployment gives you a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what you really need to be able to survive, especially in an inflationary economy like this. You have people going to food banks for the first time, people who even through the Great Recession, may not have needed to go to a food bank, but they are going now. In my mind, you can play games with that if you want to, but I would not recommend it. I also think it's interesting that John says, Yes, he found a job. And he's starting it soon. That's great news. Thank God for that. He found the job through his top five list, not from some rando and not from a job board, but from somebody he already knew. And probably this person could vouch for him. More and more. That's what I'm seeing. So I'm always telling you, I'm in the job market every single day as I have been for more than a decade now. And that is definitely one of the things that I am seeing in real time. People going through layoffs or getting fired or terminated in some way and then having to rely on people in their network. What John has experienced here of sending out applications and getting no calls and no request to interview that is common right now. In spite of the fact that you're supposed to be The robust labor market to legit open jobs for every one unemployed person churning and burning, great resignation still going strong, just hippity hop across that market it? No, let's get real, what John is talking about precisely what I am seeing day in and day out people, individual people, helping other individual people within their network. When you go on LinkedIn, or you go on Indeed, and then you can see how many other people have already applied, it is freaking astounding. Unless you are in some niche, you know, if you are a highly cleared government professional, where we can't just swing a stick, and hit a bazillion people that meet the criteria, if you are in some special, highly technical niche, where there's only a handful of you to go around, yes, the world is still your oyster. And I'm not gonna sit here and lie and say it isn't. For the vast majority of people, however, what John is experiencing, that's what they're experiencing. They apply and they apply and they apply, they don't get any phone calls, they don't get any request to interview. The only way that they're making it work, no pun intended is if they find out about a job or they land an interview because they knew somebody. Point blank. I understand. That's probably not what you want to hear. I'm sure that's probably not politically correct. But there are times in life when it boils down to who do you know, and who was willing to help you out, which is one of the reasons why, you know, I don't give you advice, I'm going to tell you what to do. But if it were me roughing out a job loss survival plan, bare minimum, I'd want to know those first five phone calls that I would make after I got laid off. Even better if you can create tin. Even better than that, if you have a top 20. If you've got a good enough network that you think you can call 20 legit people, that's awesome, you will have a better chance in my opinion, than somebody that has a list of zero. And what John has just lived through. It's proof positive. It really is. I'm sorry that he had to go through that. I'm glad that things are better. John, congrats to you. I'm so glad. And I'm glad to that you took the initiative to make that job last survival plan. I'm sorry that it came in handy. But I'm glad that you had it. And I'm also glad to hear that you and your spouse are taking a more serious approach to emergency preparedness. Because we don't know the weather is crazy. These natural disasters are crazy, whatever you may think about climate change, whether you believe it comes from co2 or whether you think manmade climate change is real. But it's, you know, something else is behind the scenes of it, whatever you may believe about it. We're living in crazy freakin times. And I think people that just bury their head in the sand. They're doing so at their own risk and to their own peril. On that note, I've said before, I don't understand the gaslighting. I don't understand the bread crumbing I'm sure there's an agenda behind it. I don't pretend to always know what that agenda is. Just that there is one, you can bet that these things are not happening on accident. It's planned out and they know what they're doing. In spite of their attempts to act like all politicians, all Wall Street bankers, all of these fat cats and their cronies are idiots. Oopsy. Daisy, we just didn't know. I don't believe that for a second. They do know. I also made the prediction that one potential narrative we could see shaping up is the Oopsy daisy. Oops a daisy unprecedented times had no idea haven't been through anything like this in a generation haven't been through anything like this since the Spanish flu pandemic blah, blah, blah. So they say that I knew that that was one potential road that they could travel down. Back in June, I wrote a blog post called a tragic science. And it's a nod to a post that I saw Yves Smith make on her website Naked Capitalism. And it also refers to a book by George DiMartino called the tragic science how economists cause harm even as they aspire to do good. There's just not the accountability, whether you're talking about Joe Blow the economist or whether you're talking about economists who actually set policy, there's just not the accountability. They have that that space to be like, Oh, oops a daisy. Oh, shucks gang. I was wrong. didn't have all the data points together. The economy's egged when I thought it was gonna zag and think about just rubbing my temples. Think about any other profession. Can you imagine a neurosurgeon performing brain surgery saying, oops a daisy, I didn't have the right data points. The human brain Zig when I thought it was gonna zag and so the patient is dead. Outside of politics, and the economists and the cronies, this kind of sheer lack of accountability and bullshit propagandizing would not be tolerated. It wouldn't. But yet, I told you, this is one potential narrative that could be used when the whole thing goes sideways. And it's so pear shaped that it cannot be ignored anymore. That's one potential way that the cronies and the fat cats and their parent media will try to defend themselves. Try to paper over at all. Oh, oops, a daisy. Oh, shucks. Rats. Nobody could have seen it come in Imagine that. And it's like anybody with common flippin since could have seen it come in 10 miles down the road. Are you kidding me? On September 1, on the job market journal, I published the article haha, the numbers were lies, because I mean, hello. I'll read from that blog post. Now. I have said repeatedly on both my blogs and my podcasts that I do not believe we've truly had these unemployment rates under 4%. No way, the data simply did not match what I saw in real time over 2022 and 2023. I've also repeatedly said that by the time you hear something in the mainstream media, you've waited too late. In my opinion, the so called economist can make any predictions they damn well, please. And if they are wrong, there's zero accountability for it. So am I surprised that these robust job market numbers are now quietly being revised? Not only No, but hell? No. The whole freaking thing has been like a potty own can Skaia dirinya Yeah. And then I go back and reference the podcast episode that I made talking about Potemkin villages, and how it creates a shell that looks good in order to obscure an unhappy or flat out dangerous reality that lies behind it. I feel like that's where we've been. On August the 23rd. Over on USA Today, an article was dropped, titled us job growth wasn't quite as strong as it appeared last year after government revision. All Oh, me. Oh, my Wowzer Okay. Government revision. Okay. So, you can create this Potemkin village, you can create this shell and tell everybody with a straight face. People are doing great. You can use the buzzwords, the mockingbird media buzzwords have robust and resilient over and over and over again, ad infinitum. But then you just go back later and you quietly revise the numbers. So I was out here and look, I've told you before I don't I don't do the false humility, false modesty nonsense. I told you. I have been on the leading edge of this for quite some time. Ergo, I'm not gonna sit here and be like, well, you know, you guys. I mean, I did kind of warn you. I told you. I told your behind what was going on. Now whether you listen to it or not, it's completely up to you. It's a free country. But I knew based on what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, all this bull crap about robust and resilient It was exactly that. I hesitate really don't even call it that because there are uses for BS. You can compost cow manure and turn it into fertilizer for your garden. It at least has some kind of merit, but this propaganda Wow. It is, in my opinion, leading people right off a cliff like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In this USA Today, article we read last year is booming job market wasn't quite as robust as believed. Yet think the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised down its tally of total employment in March 2023 by 306,000. Yeah, we were off by several 100,000 but pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. The change mostly means that there were about 300,000 fewer job gains from April 2022 through March 2023. Then first estimated, put another way, instead of adding a booming average of 337,000 jobs a month during that 12 month period. In the nation still gained a vigorous 311 500 jobs monthly 300,500 jobs monthly on average, into quote, right, of course, it did just wait for those numbers to be revised. News, Wayne to find out that well, actually in reality, we lost jobs and we're in a freaking recession. When will that news come only God knows because I don't know. On the side panel for LinkedIn over Labor Day weekend, we saw job growth cools in August. In this we read, employers hire more workers than expected in August comm up but the unemployment rate jumped to 3.8%. From 3.5%. As more Americans entered the labor market in search of jobs, the economy added 187,000 payrolls. The Labor Department reported the third straight month below the 200,000 mark, a street not seen since before the pandemic, and a sign of a cooling market. average hourly earnings were up point 2% for the month like that's going to compete with inflation. And the labor force participation rate rose to 62.8%, the highest level since February 2020. So that is pre pandemic. Trucking payrolls fell by 37,000, after yellow filed for bankruptcy protection, the Hollywood strike left an estimated 17,000 People without work, the rate at which Americans switch job switched jobs fell 3.6% in August from July, LinkedIn data shows and quote, well, that's LinkedIn data, I would say it's probably considerably lower than that. Because people are just not well, paying on people with common sense people that can look around and be like, Oh, I'm not seeing all these jobs posted in my field anymore. They're not hippity hopping across the market like they were when the great resignation actually was going strong. So I'm suspicious that in reality, that number would be different. Just like I don't think we're actually adding all these jobs. I think the economy is shedding jobs. And we're just supposed to be brainwashed and lied to, to believe otherwise. As of this recording, if you just simply go to Google, you put in job market, and then you click on news. You see results like from Reuters, US unemployment rate spikes to 3.8%. Labor market still has momentum. Oh, I'm sure it does. From NPR, the job market continues to expand at a healthy clip as US heads into Labor Day. I see. All right. So this the spin I think we're gonna get now as we move into this phase of whatever this train wreck dumpster fire downturn is cooling is cooling. It's not crashed. Take your problem, little baby and shut the hell up and go to bed. It's not crashing. It's not bad. It's cooling. It's expanding, but it's like at a healthier clip. So that's better than when it was resilient and robust, because it's, it's better now. In fact, right below that NPR headline from CNBC, we see six things to know about the job market right now. It's near perfect. economist says, Oh, wow, near perfect. Uh huh. from Forbes, the job market is cooling will the Fed notice. From Barron's August jobs report shows the labor market is cooling. Can it last year? Yeah. Also from Bloomberg, we find cooling us job market gives fed room to pause rate hikes for now, is that the point of all this? I don't know. Is the point to stop with the interest rate hikes and to get back to the age of easy money and quantitative easing and firing up the printing press and handing out money to the cronies? I don't know. That's a question that you should contemplate for yourself. Because I don't know. What I can say is that from my perspective, with the job market being my Bellwether and my area of expertise, something is really effed up here. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, something is wrong. Do I think it's cooling? It's near perfect. It's growing at a more reasonable clip? No, no. And the more that the mainstream media tries to convince me that that's what's going on, the more I'm going to be resistant to that. But nevertheless, even leaving aside my contrarian nature, I know what I'm seeing in real time. The ghosting yeah, there's still some ghosting that goes on. But it's not anything, not anything like it was when the great resignation was actually happening. Right now. Again, thinking in real time, out of out of every 10 recruiting calls where you have an interview scheduled, the person is supposed to show up at a particular time and be on the phone with you. You might have one out of 10 That's just a flat out ghost a no show and no call doesn't respond to texts doesn't respond to email, they just vanish. During the Great resignation, my God, it might be more like five or six out of 10 that would go smooth and straight up, not give a damn. The times are changing. They are, you can either wake up to that reality or you can continue listening to the hot air and hopium crowd. God help you if you do that. I'm glad that somebody like John who wrote in said, I did this job loss survival plan, even though historically, I haven't really paid attention to the job market, I did it. And now it helped me It helped me to get another job, I didn't have to sit on the market for longer than I already had to mean, when you think about it July to September, and I don't I don't know his situation, I'm not trying to put any words in his mouth. When you think about the average person living paycheck to paycheck. Two months, two solid months with no job can be devastating. That that can really make the difference between getting evicted or not starting to get behind on your bills behind on your credit card payments. That can be a devastating loss. If you have not already roughed out a job loss survival plan, if it's pertinent to you to have an RTO survival plan, if you have not already thought about those things, and rough those things out. First of all, what the hell are you waiting for? And second of all, it may already be too late. I know I've said it before, and I will say it again, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. Better to do something today than to do nothing and just go Oh, whatever hope it works out. And I feel like you're going to have a pretty good segment of the population that falls into that category. I do I know that that sounds so sour, so dour. I was listening to a podcast the other day. And you could tell that the guy was trying to end on a high note he was trying to oh, I believe in the American people. I think I think people are waking up. I think people understand the liberties that are being taken from us. I think they understand the draconian measures and blah, blah, blah. And I was like nobody freaking down. I don't think anybody cares anymore. I think people have been so pacified and babied by technology. I do like think we're getting so much closer to that Harare method where you're going to you're going to own anything. You're going to sit in a hovel, and you're just going to go into virtual reality, and that's going to be your entertainment that's going to be your raison d'etre. I hope I'm wrong. Maybe humanity will really surprise me, but I don't hold out a lot of hope for that. So I will say it again, if you don't already have that job loss survival plan if you're really believing that the labor market is robust, even in the face of them going back and revising the numbers, which should tell you they straight up knew it was bullshit the first time they tried to feed it to you. If you haven't woken up to that yet. We haven't gotten that job loss Survival Plan roughed out, I would just humbly ask you what is it going to take? Stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode.

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