By Richard E Walrath and Patricia L Johnson

The news coming out this week about our GREAT economy is bordering disaster.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated a preliminary revision to the number of non-farm jobs created by this Administration, during 2018 and early 2019, of a whopping 501,000 jobs.

The preliminary revision by the BLS is completed each year at this time, while the final report will be issued in February of 2020.  What is most unusual about this report, besides having overstated the number of jobs created by this Administration by half a million jobs, is the sheer percentage of jobs lost at -0.3 percent.

Annual benchmark revisions over the past ten years have averaged in the plus or minus two-tenths of one percent of total non-farm employment, while this revision is a reduction of a full three percentage points.

Other major economic happenings during the week ending Friday, August 23, are:

•  the volume drops in MBA Mortgage Applications, which have averaged 0.50 percent from 2007 until 2019, dropped from 21.7% for the week ending August 14, 2019 to -0.9 percent for the week ending August 21, 2019.
• The IHS Markit US Manufacturing PMI dropped to 49.9 percent.  This is the first time PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) has contracted with new orders falling the most in a decade (since September 2009).

A revision as large as 501,000 does more than just raise eyebrows.  It smacks strongly of cooking the books.  The Trump economy was never great.  It was propped up by ballyhoo and false statistics.  Now a trillion-dollar deficit looms.

So much for the Trump economy.

© 2019 Richard E Walrath and Patricia L Johnson.

Richard E Walrath is former Budget Analyst for Ohio State University, currently residing in Ohio with his family.  Patricia L Johnson is a former special assignment writer/photographer located in the Midwest.