Does Official Job Data Reflect Real Labor Market?

For today's business matters, we have Don Ma here with us. Don, what's happening in the world of business today? Right. So let me get started on the labor market. That's the big news today. So U.S. job growth accelerated much more than anticipated last month. The news provides some further reassurance for the ongoing stability of the labor market. The government reports employers added an estimated two hundred and fifty four thousand jobs in September. Now, the figure far exceeded economists' expectations, which were sitting at one hundred and forty thousand job gains. So and it's also higher than the tally of August monthly total of one hundred and fifty nine thousand jobs. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate also went down slightly to 4.1 percent. Oil prices rose. Markets worried about a potential widening conflict in the Middle East. They're fearing further tensions could disrupt crude oil flows from the key exporting region. Both Brent and U.S. West Texas intermediate crude benchmarks were up more than a dollar or over one percent. And U.S. stocks finished lower yesterday as investors kept a watchful eye on the growing conflict in the Middle East. Just to recap, the Dow dropped more than four tenths of a percent. S&P 500 shed almost two tenths and the Nasdaq ended just about flat. And let me just mention this as well, the volatility index. And this is Wall Street's fear gauge. It rose to its highest closing level in about a month with the Middle East tensions deepening, along with the strike at U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports. So experts believe that investors should be cautious here. Now, Texas is suing TikTok. It accused the social media platform yesterday of violating children's privacy and state law. Texas says the company shared children's personal information without consent from their parents. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit. Paxton said TikTok does not provide tools to restrict children's privacy and account settings. The attorney general says it also allows targeted advertising to children. Paxton says TikTok and other large technology companies must be held accountable for, quote, exploiting Texas children. TikTok did not immediately respond for a request for comment. Now, international travelers can get their passports sooner than before. The State Department says typical processing time is now four to six weeks, and that is down from the previous time of six to eight weeks and way down from the pandemic when a massive backlog stretched wait times up to 18 weeks during the summer of 2021. Now, keep in mind, though, the clock starts ticking when the State Department receives your application and ends when they send it out. If you're renewing, you can now file your paperwork online. The processing time for expedited passports haven't changed. It's still two to three weeks. And Spirit Airlines have shared Spirit Airlines shares have dramatically lost altitude. Its stock nosedived 40 percent before the bell today. And this is in response to the Wall Street Journal's report of a potential bankruptcy filing. The ultra low cost carrier has struggled to report profit in recent quarters. And this follows the airline grounding several Airbus planes due to engine issues and a failed four billion dollar merger with JetBlue Airways. Spirit also flagged steeper losses in the third quarter due to what it called an intense competitive battle. And the article said if a filing were to happen, it would not be imminent. And buckle up. Alphabet's Robotaxi fleet is expanding as Waymo expands in the US. The company announced that Waymo will be adding electric vehicles from Hyundai. Waymo plans to start on road testing with the iconic five SUVs by late next year. The iconic five will be assembled in Hyundai's Georgia facility, and it's going to be equipped with Waymo's autonomous technology. Waymo has about 700 vehicles in its fleet right now, and it's the only US company running unmanned taxis that collect fares. But the Robotaxi race is picking up speed. Next week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expected to unveil his Robotaxi product. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced plans to send the National Guard to Florida's ports to make sure goods are moving. We explored the action's legality during a strike that just got suspended. Here's the story. The Florida National Guard and Florida State Guard will be deployed to critical ports. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Thursday that he wanted to send soldiers to help at Florida ports. Florida's National Guard, a part of the U.S. military that can help during disasters and Florida State Guard, the state's own defense force, DeSantis said the move would help resume operations at the ports to bring in goods for the victims of Hurricane Helene. The hurricane has brought devastating flooding. It's going to hit the pool right here. And destroyed homes. Florida port workers have been striking, preventing goods from moving in. To have this happen in a way that could negatively impact people that are reeling from a category four hurricane, that is just simply unacceptable. The strike has been suspended. Port workers are now back on the job, but would it have been legal to send in the National Guard? The National Labor Relations Act, created in 1935, gives workers the right to strike. Using the National Guard to replace workers could be viewed as undermining that right. Unions could pursue legal action. On the other hand, governors have the power to deploy the National Guard during emergencies. Emergencies such as Hurricane Helene. Holy. In the end, courts would need to decide the legality. Government military forces have intervened during strikes in the past, most notably during the Pullman strike of 1894, where President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to break up striking railroad workers. In that case, the courts favored the government over the union and even sentenced union leaders to prison terms for contempt. The National Labor Relations Board found Howard Schultz violated labor law when he was interim CEO of Starbucks in 2022. So the board said that he made an unlawful, coercive threat when he told the California barista, if you're not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company. The statement occurred at a company event addressing Starbucks working conditions. The board said that the barista had attempted to bring up the benefits of unionization. But Schultz said that wasn't a place to discuss those issues and then made the remark about working elsewhere. Starbucks says that it disagrees with the board's decision. Schultz stepped down in March 2023 after his third time serving as CEO. Now, the latest jobs report paints a sunny picture of the U.S. labor market, according to the report of the U.S. added over two hundred and fifty thousand jobs last month and unemployment dropped as well. But not everyone seems to be convinced by the numbers. Earlier, I spoke to Jeffrey Tucker. He's the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and senior economic columnist for The Epoch Times. Take a look. So, Jeffrey, perhaps you're skeptical of these jobs report, but what do you make of this latest one? Well, it's certainly a break in trend. It's rosy across the board. We're seeing a unity between the establishment numbers and the household numbers is way beyond what expectations were for what how many jobs were created. So it's tremendously rosy. My skepticism stems from the timing. For one thing, it's the last jobs report before the election for a very critical election. And we've been seeing two years of highly suspicious manipulation of the numbers with constant revisions and growing difference between the establishment survey and household survey. It's been a little bit suspicious all along. So I was ready for something along these lines. Now we can get into what the specifics are. But I noticed a number of anomalies in the deeper charts that I looked at. Yeah, let's dive into that further. Explain to us how these jobs reports may not be reflective of the actual job market. Well, one thing is that a number of people have mentioned this. We've been seeing now for two months, many, many anecdotal reports of companies with huge numbers of layoffs and dramatic shifts out of tech, very high unemployment numbers and high end workers and and large companies with huge layoffs. And those don't seem to be reflected in here. And once you look at the job creation, you see that a substantial number of them, a third or more are part time jobs. I would have expected even more of that. But among the full time jobs, you see a lot in government, health care and social services. So those might actually stem from mostly government funding. There's also a major problem once you look at what's called the nativity of the workers. And even according to the government numbers over from September twenty twenty three to September twenty twenty four, we have a net loss of five hundred thousand jobs and native born workers and a net increase of one point five million jobs among foreign born workers. So that by itself raises certain alarm bells about what this constitutes. And I'll mention one final thing. The so-called new six numbers look a little better than the last month. That's the long term unemployed. But they're still very high at seven point seven percent unemployment rates, which is screamingly high by any historical standard. All right, Jeffrey, just one more thing. And going back to the accuracy of the job numbers, so lawmakers are actually launching an inquiry into the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics after, you know, a significantly overestimated the number of jobs created last year. What do we need to find out from this inquiry? Yeah, actually, you make an that is an excellent point. You think about about the timing of this. That's the last thing an agency like BLS wants is a detailed congressional inquiry. They call it a conspiracy theory because there's been such a divergence between the household and institutional numbers. An inquiry would look into exactly how this data is collected and how come the headline numbers are so different from the deeper data inside what exactly is the ratio of native born workers to foreign workers and how is politics affecting the way they're reporting the numbers? And and I think your question is very insightful because it would imply that, you know, the BLS had every incentive this month in particular to make this report as beautifully beautiful as possible and to bring those household and institutional establishment numbers back together again. So it doesn't look like it's so ugly. But, you know, what the thing about these kind of reports is they always get revised and I don't know, you'd have to talk somebody who's more of a specialist in this than I am. But I suspect that within two or three months, we're going to see a revision of these numbers that are going to show them dramatically down and then they'll probably revise their previous upward revision back down again. And we've seen this kind of behavior for the last two and three years. It wouldn't surprise me to see it intensify in the month before the election. All right, Jeffrey, thank you very much today. OK, my pleasure. Thank you. Now, South Korean companies LG Energy Solutions, Samsung and SK are on working on what some call the dream battery, a fire free, all solid state battery they're planning to put into mass production by 2027. And T.D. Sharm Marshall has more on this. LG Chem announced on October 1st that it worked with Pohang University to develop a temperature responsive safety reinforced layer to suppress thermal runaway in EV batteries. In simple terms, a material to keep EV battery fires from getting to the point of being hard to put out. The problem that South Korea has had to focus on since apartment garage fires have been plaguing their country, forcing the government to respond by quickly tracking which companies make which EV batteries. The thermal runaway suppression material developed by LG Chem is a composite material that changes its electrical resistance based on temperature, acting as a fuse that blocks the flow of electricity in the early stages of overheating. The company said in a statement, The dream batteries use solid electrolytes that are theoretically safer than conventional lithium ion batteries, which contain flammable liquid electrolytes. LG Chem's chief technology officer, Lee Jong-gu stated, This is a tangible research breakthrough that can be applied to mass production in a short period. LG Chem, through its battery subsidiary, LG Energy Solution, is a battery supplier for a number of EV manufacturers. LG's batteries are used in the Shanghai-made Tesla Model 3, some Ford Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit models, VW's ID.4 and the discontinued Chevy Bolt EV, along with a number of other vehicles. LG Energy Solution continues to look ahead for tech improvements with their 2024 Battery Challenge, which is now in its fourth year. Winners of that will be announced in December. Sean Marshall, NTD News. Now on to markets. U.S. stocks closed solidly higher today as a stronger-than-expected jobs report. It reassured investors who had worried the economy may be getting too weak. And job gains increased in September by the most in six months. Now, small caps outperformed with the Russell 2000 Index gaining and the S&P 500 Financials Index also rose. S&P Energy Index was also up again following oil prices going higher. Now, with tensions in the Middle East escalating, the index was also up sharply for the week. And that's all the stories we have today for Business Matters. Back to you guys.